adding signature to photos

[linbridge]

<p>Question from a beginner.<br>

..should all photos posted on line..be it Flickr or whatever have your signature added on the bottom corner of your photo, as I have seen professionals do. <br>

Can anyone just copy your photo that is posted on line....<br>

If you enter contests should your signature be on the photo...<br>

many thanks ..Linda</p>

[goldbergbarry]

<p>Good questions! First off, if a picture can be viewed online, it can be copied. </p>

<p>There is data contained in the EXIF data and you should add a copyright notice to the EXIF data, for example "© 2010 Linda Bridgeman" however the EXIF data can be modified fairly easily. You could put a signature on the picture itself but you need to think about how you're going to use the pictures. </p>

<p>If you decide to include a signature, can you tell us about your workflow and we can give you ideas for how best to do that. For example, if you use Lightroom, you could apply metadata during import that the copyright notice is added automatically, and a preset to add the signature.</p>

[steve_solomon2]

<p>Hi Linda. Yes, anything online can be copied. That's one reason I always include my logo signature on lower right corner of the image. at a reduced opacity so that it donesn't interfere with the image, yet can be seen. Also, if you post images, I recommend always posting a low-res jpeg (i.e., 750 x whatever) so that in the event the image IS copied, it won't be of any use, much less "sellable". Good luck to you! steve </p>

[denniswilliams]

<p>I find logos and banners to be more of a professional amateur obsession. I don't do it. Go online to the .coms and see work from five and six figure a day working photographers such as Bruce Weber or Leibovitz or dead ones whose exhibition work still sells from Ritts to Avedon and there are no logos or banners and they seem to survive. There are no banners or logos on Adams, Sexton, or any number of well known fine art photographers' work either. <br>

My images weigh in at approx. 35-50 MB and are represented online at an average of 750KB. Size is an excellent deterrent against repurposing. </p>

[funcrunch]

<p>Caution, lowres is not necessarily a deterrent to people taking your images. People on Facebook don't need images that can be printed and framed, and they will happily download or screenshot photos, crop the watermarks out and share them with their friends. If you're trying to sell these images than that can get frustrating very quickly. I've reluctantly started putting a watermark right across the center of most of my images that are for sale, just for that reason.</p>

[mikael_karlsson]

<p>I keep my low res files small. I also put contact info plus copyright info in a corner of the images simply to make it easy for editors and researchers to identify the individual images and to get in touch with me. I stay away from big watermarks obscuring the photos. I do this because my images are licensed because of their content - not their artistic merit.</p>

[dan_v]

<p>I too dislike logos or copyright info plastered on online photos, but pix on the web are so easy to copy that in self defense I've had to use low res versions and smaller images on certain sites (picasa, yahoo). On my own site (http://tinyurl.com/22n3e7r) I've resorted to bands of alternating light and dark © info at reduced transparency across the center of the image - from nearly undetectable on some images to more obvious on others showing lots of sky, for example.</p>

<p>I've had only one person (though I'm sure many others share the same opinion) comment about the obtrusiveness of these notices; to which I reply that I would be happy to email them a (low res) copy minus the overlay. I doubt that a serious photo buyer would balk at anyone's attempt to protect their copyrighted material.</p>