Michelle (Basic) Hendry - Fine Artist & Author

Artist and Author - Landscapes and Ruins

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Copyright Your Images

Paintings, Photography, Tips / by

Stormy Skies
Stormy Skies, acrylic painting, 8×8, © Michelle Basic Hendry

With all of the talk on the Orphan Works Bill in the U.S. it is good to know that there are some ways to put your copyright and contact information right into the image – without having to use a watermark that may make the image difficult to see. This is critical for both photographers and artists in general if you post your artwork on the ‘net.

I recently upgraded to Photoshop CS4 and in both Photoshop itself and its handy organizing sidekick Bridge, protecting your work is easier than ever. Photoshop will embed the copyright and your contact information right into the file. You cannot see it, however, if the file were opened in a professional program, such as one a company might use to work with your image, that information will come up in the File Info. It will be much more difficult for it to be declared ‘orphan’. Photoshop is not, however, the only program that provides this option.

This embeded information is called ‘metadata‘. Metadata will index on search engines. If you have your artwork photographed by a professional, you may want to ensure that they include your copyright information in the file info.

If you do not use Photoshop or your photo editing program does not have a method for recording metadata, you may want to seek one out. The IPTC website offers some suggestions. The IPTC (International Press Telecommunications Council) is attempting to provide a standard system for metadata on the web that is not platform specific.

In this post, I will show you how to embed metadata into your file using Photoshop:

1. Open your image in Photoshop and go to File> File Info…
Screen shot

2. The Dialog box will open and you will have the option to provide a description. Here I only put my copyright status (Copyrighted), statement (©Michelle Basic Hendry) and my website (www.artscapes.ca). Don’t hit the “OK” just yet…
Screen shot

3. There are tabs at the top of the dialog box which include ways of adding metadata to various file tpes including video. For our purposes, we need only be concerned with the IPTC tab. This tab will open up and ask you to provide information similar to what we have added but in more detail. This is important because the IPTC (International Press Telecommunications Council) provides a standard system for providing metadata on the web. This will insure that your metadata is readable outside of Photoshop and other Adobe products.
Screen shot

I have only provided limited information here, but you may choose to give detailed contact information.

4. The next thing is to save your image. Now I would suggest saving the image even before you have done any other modifications or corrections in order to embed the metadata into the file for every other use. So in my case, if my file is a PSD file, I’ll save it as a PSD before saving for the web. That way if you include the image in another format, the data is still embedded.  In this case I saved the file for the web. Note the little pull down menu that says “Copyright & Contact Info”. You have the option to include just the copyright name or none at all. I would suggest leaving it as I have it here.
Screen shot

I am going to open up Adobe Bridge (another program) to demonstrate that the info has been saved in a compatible and useful format:

Screen shot

I hope this little tip and tutorial has proved useful and gives the creative person a little more protection.

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Comments

  5. Michelle

    Happy holidays to you too Carol! 🙂

    Lana – I practically had to sell a kidney, but it is worth it… at least to me!!

    I am glad you found it useful, Jean!

    Phil – Photoshop is the coolest thing ever… besides paint, of course! 😉

  6. wowcthis

    This is just the info I need as I am making greetings cards as a little sideline, and have been wondering about how to protect my image! Many Thanks Michelle.

  9. Marla Anker

    You are an Angel!
    Have a wonderful and most Creative Holiday and New Year..and thank-you,thank-you! Cheers! Marla,Atlanta,GA.

  10. Michelle

    wowcthis – I am glad to see the information is useful to you!

    Kinsey- Adobe Lightroom is very similar to Adobe Bridge, and Bridge has those “fill in the blanks”. However, Photoshop is a little more commonly used by artists that are not primarily photographers. So that’s why I focused there!

    Thanks, Linda! 🙂

    I am so glad I could help, Maria! Now if only I had an angel smiley… 😀

  11. Heather

    I use an ACDSee product, which doesn’t have this particular feature…will have to check into and upgrade…this is the kind of thing I sometimes put off! Thanks for the reminder!

    Happy Holidays to you and yours Michelle!!

    Cheers

  14. Tina Mammoser

    Following a link to you that Linda gave, and thanks so much for the tutorial on this! I don’t watermark for aesthetic reasons but always wished there was a way to ’embed’ information. Techie that I am I never knew about this! Going to pass it on now. 🙂

  15. Michelle

    I am glad you found it of value, Marian!

    Tina – I am of the same view on watermarks, that’s why discovering this was so exciting. Thanks for coming!

  16. Trevor Linagrd

    Hi Michelle
    Thank you for your informative tutorial. I have experience breech of copyright 16 years ago, when laser copying was common place. Has a result of that bad experience I only market original pieces. Of course the advertising of images is still a concern in lots of respect. I shall take on board all of your advise.
    This is a great site and I have only had a brief look, but I intend to follow this in detail.
    Best Regards
    Trevor

  18. Chrissy

    Nice tip, I never even though of doing it that way which is crazy because I have a lot of experience of metadata. For those that do not have photoshop, if you right click on any image and choose the tab details, there is copyright information in here. You just click into the text area to type it in.

  20. Terry Krysak

    This is a great post, I have PS5, and the screen looks quite a bit different than what you use.
    The save option uses the .ffo extenstion do you know if that accomplishes the same thing?

    Anyone out there know of a link on how to do this using GIMP, have not found anything yet in my searches on google, and there is nothing I can find in the GIMP help either.
    Thanks
    Terry

  21. Michelle

    Thanks for visiting, Terry.
    As for PS v.5 – I haven’t used it in nearly a decade (CS4 is v.11 and I am certain it works back to v.8), so I can’t say if the file info is the same. Considering that the standards are newer than a this, I would doubt it. You might want to look into an alternative. Check the IPTC link and see if there is more help there.