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Copyrighting and watermarking.

mctiny

mctiny

mctiny

Soldato
Joined
18 Oct 2002
Posts
4,073
Location
cidade maravilhosa
As the global financial doom and gloom hits our streets and pockets, it's a time when most of us are thinking of a little extra cash ;)

After slowly allowing myself to let more people see my photos, previously reserved for many reasons, I've beens getting some good feedback and many people suggested about selling them as postcards or photos here in Brazil and this got me thinking;) maybe worth a shot but how do I keep my photos...well..."mine".

So I turn to you all here and ask:

How do we go about copyrighting and watermarking digital photos?
 
The photos are already copyright protected in your name. To watermark simply put your name in the Jpeg exif data, its clean, simple and unobtrusive. You wont be able to sel a photo commercially with some rubbish text all over it.

The hard thing is finding a method for selling, and its even harder to make a sale.

The easiest method of selling is microstock but don't expect large returns until your portfolio has over 1000 quality pics. Macro stock is tough to get into, best to start micro. If you sell through a personal website no one will trust you. There are various sites that allow you to put up a portfolio and sell photos with a more trustworthy interface. Some charge monthly fees, others take a % cut in sales.


Probably the best method is to print and mount and sell in person. This takes effort to sale, but the profit margin is much higher (with microstock you often only get 30 cents a sale).
 
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As above, copyright is automatic in the UK and I assume this is probably the same in Brazil. If you don't want people to steal images, the best protection is simply to only put small sizes on the internet, as they can't be used for anything. On my site, I use images with largest side 500px. That's pretty small, and you could use larger, but it's good enough to see the image and keeps loading times and bandwidth usage down. Use of a javascript image viewer will prevent R-Click copy and paste for the most part and you can make the /images/ directory un-indexable, so unless you're particularly keen and go into the source code to get the name of the image directly, then you're not going to get far.

Watermarks get in the way and distract from an image, so if you can get away without using them, then do.

As for sales, if you're selling postcards and you're in a touristy area, then it might be best to approach some local shops and bars to see if they'll take any.
 
D.P. said:
The photos are already copyright protected in your name. To watermark simply put your name in the Jpeg exif data, its clean, simple and unobtrusive. You wont be able to sel a photo commercially with some rubbish text all over it.

The hard thing is finding a method for selling, and its even harder to make a sale.

The easiest method of selling is microstock but don't expect large returns until your portfolio has over 1000 quality pics. Macro stock is tough to get into, best to start micro. If you sell through a personal website no one will trust you. There are various sites that allow you to put up a portfolio and sell photos with a more trustworthy interface. Some charge monthly fees, others take a % cut in sales.
Click to expand...
This looks long winded, but maybe worth a shot...
Probably the best method is to print and mount and sell in person. This takes effort to sale, but the profit margin is much higher (with microstock you often only get 30 cents a sale).
Click to expand...

This is closer to what I was thinking...
 
A.N.Other said:
As above, copyright is automatic in the UK and I assume this is probably the same in Brazil. If you don't want people to steal images, the best protection is simply to only put small sizes on the internet, as they can't be used for anything. On my site, I use images with largest side 500px. That's pretty small, and you could use larger, but it's good enough to see the image and keeps loading times and bandwidth usage down. Use of a javascript image viewer will prevent R-Click copy and paste for the most part and you can make the /images/ directory un-indexable, so unless you're particularly keen and go into the source code to get the name of the image directly, then you're not going to get far.

Watermarks get in the way and distract from an image, so if you can get away without using them, then do.

As for sales, if you're selling postcards and you're in a touristy area, then it might be best to approach some local shops and bars to see if they'll take any.
Click to expand...

Interesting point about Copyrights here, I'm looking into any differences but I'm not sure there will be any.
Resizing to 500px is a great idea that I never thought about before, currently I'm using Fotopic.net and photobucket to show the photos with right click disabled and set to private so right now I just email the link and password to the people I want, until I can organise and trust a long term solution.

With watermarks I was thinking of something small in the corner that could be covered by a border in a frame, I'm living in a city called Niterói which is next to Rio de Janeiro (where I work) and also have somewhere to "showcase" (sell) my photos here...

Seems like I have a lot more research to do but seems like the right plan.:)
 
mctiny said:
This looks long winded, but maybe worth a shot...


This is closer to what I was thinking...
Click to expand...


As I said. If you want to start selling, then microstock is a great way, depending on what you photograph. You can sign up in minutes and upload photos. They get reviewed by professionals giving you level of input into your technical abilities. Selected photos are then automatically put on sale. All the copy right issues, advertising, selling, management is all done for you. You just get a cheque or a papal payment. The tedious thing is keywording.
Profit is very slow to begin with but will pick up over time. The good thing is you make sales even if you put no effort in for several months.
But overall you need to commit a lot of time taking lots of photos.

If you print postcards then you have to source material, pay a modertae upfront production cost, and go about your own selling and advertising. Where and how are you going to sell. Are you going to set up a stand every Saturday in a tourist zone and spend a lot of your free time selling? OR try to sell to local shops who ma not be interested without knowledge that the postcards would indeed sell.What business model would you use (sell to shop, or give to free to the shop to sell and take a commission).
 
any microstock site you guys recommend?

Postcards should be easier for me as I have a friend in printing and two local sales points ready and waiting...

The key thing for me is to have fun taking photos and if I can sell them then great, I'm not looking at making a living from them, not just yet anyway.
 
No reason to start a new thread, so, trying a few ideas for "Watermarking" and borders.

Which looks better though?

A>
yz35i2.jpg

B>
yz35i3.jpg


Any input would be helpful...;)
 
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