As came up in one of our current threads, internet piracy and the use of imagery is always a constant concern for those who contribute to online art communities, competitions or even your own personal websites. As we've seen on rare occasion even in this site itself, there have been those who wish to peddle others imagery as their own.

So here's a thread to voice some of your suggestions, as a community, as to what you think are good ways of protecting your imagery.

In rush at the moment so I'm just going to paste my previous post here. : )

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honestly, I don't think watermarking is really necessary. not in the large scale as a lot of people do and it really detracts from the image.

one thing we've consitently tried to get people to do on this site is to keep your images small. create them at high res but save a version that is 700 px wide or less and make sure the image is under 500 kb in size, preferably less than 300 if you can. smaller the better.

reason being, images that are this small are no good to anyone when enlarged to a printable scale. the best anyone could do with them without them getting pixelated or blurred is to use them online or in small ads.

 you can never really stop the piracy without either destroying your work with large watermarks, or you just don't contribute. neither are really going to benefit you much. so if you keep your images as small as possibly with them looking good, then that's really the best you can do.

 

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"Live life like a fantasy. Reality is only in your mind!" - Fabledgoat

Is'nt there any way to code a picture's info or such to let it show whos it is?

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You can embed author and copyright info into a file in Photoshop using the "file info..." option in the file menu. That wont stop someone just changing that info and replacing it with their own though.

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Was afraid of that.

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Life is contrast.

www.geiropdal.com

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I guess you can always do what Rembrandt did and include your own protrait in your pictures :) (Not sure if he always did but it seems it happened quite a bit). Or choose to place your signature in a place where it might be mistaken for part of the picture. A seasonal example would be to put your siggy as a name on a tombstone if you make a graveyard picture. That way the thief just might miss it.

Several years ago now, some images of mine were stolen, together with a whole bunch of other peoples. In that case we sent a cease and desist mail to the website provider who took the site down. It had to be all properly phrased though (lawyer speak) and I needed to get all the others' written approval before I was allowed to speak on their behalf. Surprisingly at least one person refused, thinking I might be up to no good. I never quite understood that. But anyway, the website disappeared and I guess the person who refused my help got a free ride :P
[Not that it has any bearing on the subject but it were thumbs of 3D items all stolen from the same community, Cybertown, and posted on a website by someone who claimed he was making the items for the Sims - interesting too how he could show finished images of things he said he was going to make, not things already made...]

I'm generally of the same opinion as goat, that watermarks are ugly. Something I've done once or twice though is give the watermark a really low opacity so that it only shows up in the finished piece if you really crank up the contrast. Doesn't always work though.

I don't understand that thing I've seen people do with watermarks either, where they put a small one right at the bottom of the image. Anyone even halfway competent with Photoshop, as I assume most art thieves must be, despite their choice of pastime, could just crop it off. You might as well not bother.

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http://www.artfulscruff.co.uk | deviantart
Playstation Network user ID: artfulscruff

True Philby. Big watermarks are ugly. Hmm.. can't help to think there must be some way to make a hidden unchangeable sign.

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Life is contrast.

www.geiropdal.com

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There have been times when I tried to save a picture from the internet to use as a texture and the website did not let me do it. It gave me a warning that said forbidden. I don't know if you have to code that into your own personal website or if it's part of the image file though.

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I smell dead people.

That's done in the coding for the site. Not in the picture itself unfortunately.

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Life is contrast.

www.geiropdal.com

My IFX portfolio
My sketchbook

Yup, some sites add code that blocks the right click ability in the browser so you can't access the save options, others use flash galleries because there are no right click save options in flash apps. Unfortunately both of these are completely and utterly pointless because both methods can be easily circumvented by taking a screen cap the webpage and cropping out the stuff they don't want.

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when you do figure it out Geir somebody will steal the idea.

I wonder if you can warp you sig into your image, where its stretched or skewed.

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yah, there aren't a whole lot of ways to get around it. remember too, if you put a watermark on, there's nothing stopping someone from cropping it out and using any other part of the image.

you can put the watermark in the middle of the image. meaning the person could use the head at the top of the image, or the feet at the bottom, etc. so not only have your uglicized your image, but people can still steal the shoes off the bottom.

I'm still of the mind that the best bet is to keep it large enough to be viewed respectably, but small enough to be useless to anyone unless they're posting it on the web. unfortunately that's one part you can't really get around. if you put it on the web, it can be stolen and put back on the web. 

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"Live life like a fantasy. Reality is only in your mind!" - Fabledgoat

While I can understand the concern for this I am getting rather tired of it, not of internet piracy it's always around but the "What are we going to do about it" scenarios constantly being garbled out. If you think someones ripping off you're artwork particularly using it to make money when they obviously shouldn't then tell them to stop, if they don't stop, then post out a warning for people not to go onto that site. They will realize that it isn't profitable to rip off peoples artwork and eventually stop if enough people don't bother visiting that site since they'll know it isn't legitimate.

This is how the free market works folks, in real life when you don't want a business to rip you off, you stop shopping their and tell your friends to do the same, it's a simple and effective measure that doesn't annoy the people that you're trying to attract, please don't make the mistake of games companies who think putting DRM and spyware onto their customers' PCs is the way forward. 

The thing is, you don't always have the control over when people use your work as theirs. And if you find that someone has taken one of your pieces for their own, say about 3 years before you discover it. How are you to be able to convince people that YOU are the artist behind it and not the thief. In the viewers eyes, you might stand out as the thief. But if you can put in some secret coding, be it embedded in the image own code or a part of the picture like a hidden signature or the likes. Than it will be easier to prove you're the original artist. DRM and spyware is crap and should never be used.

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Life is contrast.

www.geiropdal.com

My IFX portfolio
My sketchbook