With the coming of the digital camera, almost everyone has turned a digital photographer; digital photography has come to be more than just a hobby. Photo sharing has been revolutionized thanks to hundreds of photo blog and collective networking sites available. Sharing pictures with friends and family had never been so easy in the whole of human history. Unfortunately, the premise to share your pictures over the internet can also be abused; in fact some unscrupulous citizen are abusing it by stealing the pictures.
Monica from Malaysia faced a similar problem. She was surprised to find a photograph clicked by her for a documentary called "living with nature" on someone else site; and this photograph had a distinct name under it. This made her aware of how citizen can steal others pictures or uses them for distinct purposes, not stylish by you. Then she realised the importance of copyrighting her pictures.
Monica talked to distinct professionals for guidance, and she came to the end that copyright symbols and watermarking pictures can be an effective way to stop misuse of your pictures. We will discuss both of these one by one:
News From Malaysia
Copyright Symbols
When we hear about copyright, we think about some big clubs copyrighting their books, Cds, pictures etc, so we might think that copyrighting pictures is only for pro photographers or so; however, the good news is that you don't need to be one in order to copyright your pictures.
Even if you happen to click a photograph of your car, the photograph exclusively belongs to you and you are the only someone who can authorise somebody else to reproduce it or use it. The best way to let others know about it is by attaching a copyright consideration to your pictures. Using the copyright emblem "©" or writing the word "copyright" along with the year and name is sufficient to let others know that they cannot use the photograph without permission.
Monica, for example, used the following for her pictures: "Photo © 2010 Monica Gomes".
You can also add a copyright to a photo in the photo's caption.
Watermark
To Watermark your pictures with a copyright consideration is even a stronger strategy to safe your pictures than to just copyright them.
The demand may arise, as to what a watermark is and how can I watermark my pictures with the copyright notice?
A semi transparent image which is settled over an image is called watermark. If one copies the picture, the watermark is copied with it. So it can deter the intentions of image stealers to quite an extent.
You would be required to decree the size and placement of the watermark on your picture(s).
Rule of thumb is that more intrusive the watermark image is, the harder the photograph becomes to be stolen. The disadvantage is that it becomes difficult to view the image. You would need to find a balance between the two.
Watermarks can be of distinct types like generic or specific text, image, date or copyright. You are required to have right software to do this job.
One you have added the watermark, your image becomes copyrighted and by all means; of course much more difficult to others to nick!
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