Copyright protection

[jyerxa]

I have really picked up a lot of tips from you guys. I got an f/2.8 24-85mm zoom for my camera for Christmas. I absolutely love it! I never would have picked it up had I not been so impressed at Grandpasrichard’s new glass he got last year and see the dramatic improvement for myself. I could see his before and after photos.

So I took some gardening photos for some friends of mine a couple weeks ago so they could enter their plants into a contest a magazine was having. They must be pretty good. My photos that is.  Well maybe their plants. Beats me.   

What is the best way to preserve or validate and verify that you are the one and only photographer? Water markes? Signatures? And how do you sign you photos? And if you use RAW is that good enough to prove your photo is yours?

Thanks ahead of time. 

[h2ofowlr]

Send a txt to bone or those that put there copywrite or trade marks one there pictures.  They will have an answer for you.

[jyerxa]

Thanks. Will do. 

[LndShrk]

Copyrights and watermarks are completely different.

You take the picture you own the copyright (unless you sign it away)..


Watermarks can be done through many applications.

I use Adobe Lightroom. It is a fairly inexpensive but powerful tool. 

[grandpawrichard]

I have really picked up a lot of tips from you guys. I got an f/2.8 24-85mm zoom for my camera for Christmas. I absolutely love it! I never would have picked it up had I not been so impressed at Grandpasrichard’s new glass he got last year and see the dramatic improvement for myself. I could see his before and after photos.

So I took some gardening photos for some friends of mine a couple weeks ago so they could enter their plants into a contest a magazine was having. They must be pretty good. My photos that is.  Well maybe their plants. Beats me.   

What is the best way to preserve or validate and verify that you are the one and only photographer? Water markes? Signatures? And how do you sign you photos? And if you use RAW is that good enough to prove your photo is yours?

Thanks ahead of time. 

Thanks for the extremely nice compliment on my photos jyerxa!

Here's a little info I posted many moons ago:

Adding Text to a Photo


Several people have asked me how I add titles or my signature to photos. So I have decided to write up this little set of Instructions to explain how to do it. It is actually quite Easy to do once you have been pointed in the right direction.

I use Adobe Photoshop CS3 quite a bit to do my photo editing, but titles and signatures can be added to photos in two of my favorite Free Downloadable Photo Editing software. Those programs are GIMP and Picasa.

In Adobe it is quite simple to add Text to a photo. You simply click on the Text button on the left hand side of the screen and then place the blinking cursor where you want to type. You type out what you want to add, choose the size, type, boldness and if you want Italic style of the font by highlighting it and then you go to the text bar at the top of the screen.
Once you have done this you can reposition the text to make it look right in the photo. After you have done this step you must go to the Layer Command Button on the task bar and choose the Rasterize command. Then choose Text. This embeds the text into the photo. I also Rasterize all the Layers of the photo. This command locks everything in the photo.
Next you choose the size of the photo by going to the Image Command Radio Button on the task bar. Choose Image size and adjust the height and width of the photo. I normally choose 800 X 600 pixels because it is a nice size, it emails easily and it is a size that most sights on the internet accept.

In Picasa you edit your photo and when that is done you select the Text radio button on the Left hand side of the screen. Now you can choose the Font Style, Font size, Boldness and if you want Italics. From here you go to the photo and click your mouse button in the spot you want the text. Now you simply start typing.
If you need to move the text it can be done easily as soon as you are done typing.
Your next step is to Save the photo to a file on your computer. I have Picasa setup to save the photos at 640 pixels for emailing and posting to the internet.

Finally, here is how to do the same job in Gimp. Go to the Toolbox. Select the Style of Font, the Size, Boldness and if you want Italics. Then you click on the Font Radio Button. When you click inside the photo a box will appear for you to type in. When you are done check mark the command Use Selected Font. Now your Text will be in the photo and you can move it around in the photo to place it where you want it.
Here is where you go to the Image Radio Button, click on it and select Scale Image. Then you use the up/down arrows to bring the photo down to 800 X 533 pixels. Now you are ready to save the photo to a file on your computer.

I Highly recommend the Free Photo Editing Softwares like Gimp and Picasa. They are quite easy to use, they do a great job and they don’t cost like the Adobe Photoshop does!

I hope this little tutorial explains Text Addition to photos and makes it easier for you to understand and do!

Dick Raymond

Copyright 6/18/2010

Embedding watermarks and Photographer information inside the photo can be done with Adobe Lightroom and many other photo editing programs.

Dick

[grandpawrichard]

Oh, by the way, now I use Adobe Lightroom 4 and it's a breeze to do a signature in it!

Dick

[jyerxa]

Thanks Dick. 

[Bean Counter]

I have Lightroom 5 and love it. I tried photoshop elements and I absurdly hated it. Lightroom will do 95% of everything I want to do; about 5x faster than I could get it done with Photoshop.

Watermarks can be either cropped or smeared out of a photo with ease unless you want to paste it all over the photo to the point that it is distracting and unsightly.

You don't have to "register" a copyright and you don't even have to put in a watermark. Technically us copyright law is written such that the moment you fire the shutter you become a copyright holder. If it came down to it I'm sure it's in the EXIF Metadata not just the model of camera but specific serial number. I'm sure it would be easy enough to prove that you shot it if you wind up creating a masterpiece and rights get disputed 

Nothing required on your end to register the copyright. It is illegal to download, or even repost a photo without the expressed representation of the creator. It doesn't matter that you're doing it in a non-profit manner.

[jyerxa]

Great Info Bean Counter! Thank you too. 

[jyerxa]

I just want to thank all of you guy's not only for this question I had, but every other comment on techniques and glass. I've enjoyed so many of your photos and the knowledge you share so graciously.

I really don't think I should post any pictures that I took of someone elses garden that I took on behalf for them. I view it as commissioned work that they own the rights too even though I did it as a friend free of charge. That is just the way I am. I incredibly happy with this new lens and I don't really have anything good to share yet with you all unless you want to see my cat.  He was the only victim I could find so far. 

But I just wanted to share with you an update to that contest. My friends wanted to enter 10 of them. I think 3 of them didn't get posted/entered in time for either size limit of maybe my friends maxed out. How ever! I just found out today that six of them are up for consideration. I'm really excited about that! I think it would be so awesome to have at least one of them published in an international magazine. My long gone youthful dreams consided of a lot of the work you guys do too, wild life, and end up on the National Geographic cover. Hope you all have great success in you endeavors too. 

[jyerxa]

This is one of my friends dog. She is really old and I love all dogs. So I like this picture. I like the dog. But this new lens is like driving around a corvette compared to a Saturn compared to my old lens. I like this one for one, because of the dog. But I think this also shows the power of this F/2.8. With all of that back ground light I took this with out a flash. The way the room was at the time. That's the Super Bowl in the background. Yeah! HAWKS!!! 

[jyerxa]

Here is the latest update to that contest my photos were entered in. I think it is run like the monthly contests we have here at Hunt-Wa. Soooo maybe not as big a deal as a magazine as I first thought. There will be a grand prize latter on in the year. So this was just an entry in the over all contest. I do think there is a magazine. It is my friends contest so I wait to here from them what is going on. But I did get this email from my friends. So for now I am remaining anonymous about it all. I thought I would share this with you guys.

Hi there,

Apologies it has taken this long to contact you, we've been crazy busy this week.

Congratulations on your win in the Yickedy Yack photo competition, the Yickedy Yack images are amazing, really like the greens and the depth of field in the shot!

To claim your prize we need you to do the following:

- Select the strain you want from our website. You'll receive gift.
- Provide a postage name and address so we can ship your items

Once we have these details we'll ship the prize and provide a tracking number for the package.

Any questions just shout.

Congratulations again.

The Yickedy Yack Team.