Photoshop CC: The Missing Manual

Protecting Your Images Online

Being able to share images with the world via the Web is a glorious thing, but, in doing so, you risk having your images stolen (gasp!). It’s frighteningly easy for thieves to snatch photos from your website to sell or use as their own, so it’s important to take steps to protect them. You can deter evildoers in several different ways, including posting smaller versions of your images (640x480 pixels, for example), using photo galleries such as www.smugmug.com that prevent folks from Control-clicking (right-clicking) to copy images to their hard drives, embedding copyright info, adding watermarks, or using Zoomify (see the box on Zoomify Your Enlargements). Keep reading for the scoop on each option.

Embedding Copyright Info

One of the first steps you can take toward protecting your work is to embed copyright and contact info into the image file by choosing File→File Info (see Figure 18-13). Sadly, this won’t keep folks from stealing your image (heck, they won’t even see it unless they open your file and peek at its title bar or choose File→File Info themselves), but they might think twice about taking it if they do find a name attached to it. Alternatively, you can declare that the image is in the public domain, granting anyone and everyone a license to use it.

Figure 18-13. Choosing File→File Info lets you attach all kinds of descriptive info to an image. ...