Protecting Your Photos From Theft

The only secure solution to really protect your photos is not to post them on the internet at all. That however is not the best solution if you want to show your work to the world which can lead to potential sales. From recent experience, there is always going to be some idiot who thinks they are above the law when it comes to copyright infringement and image theft. Most countries protect your works automatically when they are created and when it becomes available on the internet. It is very important to always specify ownership of your images and to heavily watermark them with copyright, logos, etc.
Never upload the full resolutions of your photos on the internet. Always use a much smaller resolution of the original and stamp it heavily with a watermark. It is best to use a clear watermark where others can at least still view the image. No amount of coding for your website will prevent thieves from stealing your photos. Once it is posted it can be stolen. There are methods such as disable right click, print screen and so forth to deter image theft but it cannot be totally stopped. Low versions of your photos that are heavily watermarked is the best legal statement that the image belongs to you.
Another alternative is to sell your images on CD or DVD. This way you could have a registered owner with a unique key. However, there are still drawbacks to this because cds and dvds can be shared easily with others and ripped. This method could also be a slow down in sales because most people want their product for download immediately once they pay for it. This could be perhaps used as a backup selling source with a registered owners list so you know who has a copy of you photo disc. This would make it much easier to track illegal usage and distribution of your pictures.

Those Bad Photo Shots May Be Good For Something

Have you ever had photo shots that didn't turn out so well. Perhaps the picture had a bad angle or poor composition. Well, there is still hope for that rotten photo to come in handy providing it is not out of focus or a poor resolution. Even then the worst of the crop can do with a complete makeover. This is where photo manipulation does its job.
Powerful editing programs such as Photoshop have many filters and plugins that can do amazing transformations. Camera shots that didn't go well usually are good candidates for abstraction photo manipulation. This is because it is the easiest form of digital editing to achieve with photographs that contain unwanted bad lighting, uneven color, and so forth. All these faults in a photo can be completely controlled by added effects, color control, and much more. It is just a matter of experimentation till you come up with a unique design or look that catches your eye. The end result is a completely new picture that can be worth something and one more added to your photo collection.

The image above is an example of extreme photo manipulation.  Although the before photo is not entirely undesirable it could use simple editing such as cropping and perhaps removing the stump in the background.  Overall, this photo has many possibilities.  It can be edited just enough to leave it in its natural state or completely altered to create a new image.   

The Difficult Task Of Getting Your Photo Site Noticed

There are many ways to cuts costs in setting up your own commercial website for selling photos. However, the task of trying to get your photo site ranked in the search engines can be daunting. A higher ranking in the search engines means more traffic. Traffic exchanges can be useful for the short term so do not hesitate to use them if you so desire. From experience, once you stop using traffic exchanges the visitor rate will drop if your site is very new. Submitting to free search engines and directories are useful but be aware that it could take months before your photo site is even listed. The reality is that it could take two or three years for a site to become fully developed on the internet unless your willing to pay for sometimes very expensive advertising. This is not always feasible for someone on a tight budget.


Good backlinks are hard to get unless you pay for them. There are a few free sites for artists that will help you get a little higher on the search engines. One such site is artistsites.org. Another one that can aid the “starving artist” is Artist-Listing.com. The latter has a free membership as well as a paid memberships that allow you to showcase more of your work than the free version. There are also some free hosting sites that rank well in the search engines that can help get you to the top of the pages quicker. Trading links is fine as long as the link is related somehow to the subject of your site. There are also social networking sites.


In the long run it will take time and patience to get your photo site noticed if you do not really want to pay for the extra expenses of promoting your site.