Protecting your online images is something you have to consider if you have a photo blog or photography website or display your images any other site.

If you put your favorite images online, don’t be surprised if enterprising pirates snatch your shots and put them on their own Web sites. While protecting your online images entirely might be an impossible task, there are steps you can take to at least slow the Internet thieves down a little and make things more difficult for them.

Those searching for images for their blogs and Web sites have plenty of legal options. But that doesn’t stop many from copying and pasting images that they have no legal rights, too. They just take whatever they like as it is often just too easy to do.

The bad thing is that whoever took the original photograph has no control over how thieves use their work.

The best way to protect your images is to not post them online at all. Obvious really!

But if you don’t want to go to such drastic measures, you could always place a watermark on your online image. A watermark is usually a clear symbol of some sort that partially covers an online image.

Visitors can still see your image clearly, but novice thieves won’t be able to use the image without the watermark – which can be your Web site name or your name, for instance – being clearly visible to their visitors.

An even more powerful weapon against image thieves is known as shrink-wrapping. This places a transparent image over your online photos. When thieves save your image, they’ll get a surprise when they try to open it or use it: They’ll get a picture of nothing.

Unfortunately, while these two techniques work well against casual image thieves, they probably won’t stop those who are more skilled or determined. But at least by taking these two steps, you’ll be protecting your online images to the best of your ability.

Some protection has to be better than none at all!

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Filed under: Online Images

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