Article: Protecting Your Images Online, Pt. 2

continued from Page 1

 

Watermarking

An even better way of protecting images is to watermark them. Watermarking is placing either a ghost stamp or a caption on your picture. 

The above image has an URL on it as a watermark.

Doing this is very easy. All you do is basically open up your images in an image editor, and place a slightly transparent graphic over them-- either that, or an opaque caption featuring your site's URL or a copyright notice.

Besides protecting your images, there's another added benefit to watermarking: it can become a form of free advertising for your site and work. So even if someone decides to swipe your images in spite of your "stamp", at least his or her visitors will see where these borrowed images come from. And in the world of cyberspace where promotion costs a lot of money, I can't think of a better tradeoff to getting your images lifted.

Now one thing to keep in mind before you run off to do this: if you plan to go with the URL/ copyright method of watermarking, make sure you place the text in a way where people can't successfully crop it out and still get a nice picture out of it.
 

In Summary

If the above methods still don't satisfy your feelings of anxiety, unfortunately, the only other option you have is to not post your images at all, because as I said, there are no real failsafes against having them ripped off. However, if you must post original artwork online and don't mind the possibility of an occasional theft here or there, using the watermark method is the best way to go. Not only will you get credit for your work, but watermarked images may even bring more attention to you in the form of web site promotion.
 

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