Quick Tip: How to Prevent Image Theft

March 12th, 2013

Images and photos are a very important part of every website. They describe the website content and make the website more attractive and interesting. No wonder, a nice photo on a website is a temptation for anyone looking for a nice picture for their own purpose. Nevertheless, every image or photo must be considered a unique piece of art. Since there are many individuals who simply do not respect copyrights and then download pictures from the internet without the consent of the author, we decided to show you how to prevent images being stolen from your website. To learn more, continue reading.
A third party can easily download and use your image when you post it online without any protection. The best way to protect your picture from downloading is placing a watermark on every picture you publish.

What is a watermark?

A watermark is a visible overlay consisting of text or logo with a copyright notice that is embedded in a digital photo or image. Removing it in Adobe Photoshop takes a lot of time and patience, and since laziness is one of the most common reasons why people decide to download images, it’s not very likely that they’d put much effort in trying to delete a watermark from an image.

How to create a watermark

There are many ways how to create a watermark for your image. If you are used to working with Adobe Photoshop, you can find a short tutorial that shows how to place a watermark on the picture using this program.

If you don’t know how to use Photoshop, don’t worry. There are online tools such as Watermarktool which lets you place a watermark on your image online. You just have to upload the image, choose the color and position of your watermark, save, and download the watermarked image to your computer.

What should a good watermark contain?

When creating a watermark for your image, keep in mind that a watermark should be positioned with utmost care. Try not to distract attention from the picture with the watermark. The best is to place a watermark in the center of the picture but make sure you use the appropriate color. A proper watermark should furthermore contain your logo, URL of your website or name of the owner of the image, to make everybody see whom the picture belongs.

In case you have any unprotected pictures on your website that you don’t want stolen, consider placing a watermark on them. Are you planning on developing SEO on your website? Try the step-by-step guide.