Making a picture my own

[fhasan]

Hey guys, I am new here. I am a new photographer and I had a question.
I dont want to post some of my photography pics on faceboook, well because I feel like it't not much of my property anymore, anyone can download it and use it for their purposes. I would like to add a small logo or my name to each picture, I post. What do you guys think? and any advice on the easiest way of going about this??

thank you for advance!

[zona5101]

Hi and welcome.

lots of people put a logo or watermark on their images.

[nickbedford]

This is called watermarking and it's a good idea. The problem everyone faces is that images are ultimately "stealable" because there's simply no way to stop someone from using the image or taking a screenshot of your website image and whatnot.

I usually just throw my website link in the corner as I really dislike watermarks that cover the whole image. They take away from the photo. I totally realise how "stealable" my approach is, but there isn't a great deal you can do. I prefer to showcase my photos instead of showcase my logo with a background. Full image watermarks are usually used when showing proofs to clients, though.

My watermark is pretty simple. Ultimately it comes down to marketing and awareness. No watermark means most people will just take it and use it whether they know about copyright licensing or not. At least with a small watermark, people are aware someone owns the photo and possibly give a location where they can see more work or their contact details. Whether mine is too small or not is another debate.

[faeriegodess612]

My advice would be: First of all, is your Facebook set so that only Friends and Family can see photos. For instance, mine is, so I dont worry too much about them being stolen. If your using it as a means to get your work seen/ out there,...I'd suggest resizing them for web. Facebook automatically does this, but you can do it anyways. This makes the file smaller, so if someone succeeds in stealing it, there isnt much they can do with it. If your editing software doesnt have this feature, or you dont have editing software I suggest downloading this. Image resizing, do it with PIXresizer

As for watermarking. Thats easy peasy. All you have to do is add text to a photo and save. Just like Nicks example shows. You can make your watermark whatever you want it to be. Make sure that you save a copy of the photo you want to watermark before watermarking though, so you have the original file free and clear to do whatever you want with later. If you use the pix resizer, it will make a copy of the photo for you, so you can watermark that copy if you want. Smaller file size also means quicker uploading times for Facebook and Flickr.

[Biomech]

Me too! I only upload 600x600, 1dpi (no idea if this makes a difference in reality tbh) and watermarked with a big fat one :P (usually have white borders too)

[Sloseph]

ye DPI makes a massive difference, if someone stole it and tried to resize it they just get a big fat pile of pixelated mess

[Biomech]

ye DPI makes a massive difference, if someone stole it and tried to resize it they just get a big fat pile of pixelated mess

It would definately be fail if they tried to print the image but....and this might sound stupid, but surely the DPI is just a stored value to send on to the printer. Wouldn't it be a case of opening the stolen image in Pshop and saving it at a higher DPI?

[faeriegodess612]

Originally Posted by Biomech

It would definately be fail if they tried to print the image but....and this might sound stupid, but surely the DPI is just a stored value to send on to the printer. Wouldn't it be a case of opening the stolen image in Pshop and saving it at a higher DPI?

Quite possibly. There's only one way to find out. Have a trusted friend, or family member with another computer somehow save one of your photos that youve reduced for web, and try to resize it.

[nickbedford]

DPI has no bearing on the image until it is printed. Your "1 DPI" setting really doesn't have any effect on screen. Digital images have a width and height in pixels (which you probably already know). The DPI determines how many of these pixels are printed per inch when printing, which may be changed to print an image larger or smaller.

DPI is just a piece of metadata stored in the image file.

An image that is 1800x1200 pixels printed at 300 dots per inch will end up being a 4x6" print. 6" x 300 dpi = 1800 pixels.

[Biomech]

Yeah exactly, so as it's just metadata, it would simply be a case of editing the file properties to say 300dpi before printing right? I guess setting it to 1dpi would confuse the kiddies but it's easily fixed.

An image that is 1800x1200 pixels printed at 300 dots per inch will end up being a 4x6" print. 6" x 300 dpi = 1800 pixels.

You know out of all of your previous very confusing numbers for pixel/dpi ratios etc. This one makes absolute perfect sense and easy to remember cheers. Longest Pixel Length / 300 = Inches :P