These days sharing your images online and protecting them from undesired/unlawful use has been seen as a misnomer. Luckily there are methods to protect your works if you desire to retain all your rights to your photos.

Display with Flash Viewer

There are plenty of free and easy methods to display photographs. Many of these methods require yout to have a basic understanding of html, but many have clear instructions on how to set them up on your website. The one’s I’ve previewed don’t have “save as image” protection automatically, so you’ll have to choose one that makes it the easiest

While this method is helpful, it doesn’t stop the infamous “Prnt Scrn” method of copying visual works. It also requires that you have a web host and website/blog with considerable coding freedom. (aka not Flickr/Picasa Web etc) Comes to play two other methods.

Use Tiny Thumbnails

Most “infringers” will want to enlarge photos for social media and background use. While this method doesn’t allow users to see details, it gives the viewer a visual “summary” of the works.

Watermark your Images

My friend Jillian Betterly used this method to preview wedding photos for her clients. She would display samples of photos she took with a heavy watermark of her logo. She placed the watermarks right above the subject of interest within the photo, such as smiling faces.Clients or anybody wanting a copy of the photos would submit orders and she would deliver their memories without watermarks. The watermark would still allow prospective purchasers to see the areas of interest within the photos, but make it indesireable for them to copy it for their personal use without paying for her ” visual memory capturing” and printing services. This method is also used by many stock photo purchase services.

Using all three methods together and tweaking them to your liking you’ll make it difficult for would be infringers to take your works.

I’ll often argue that artists should be able to desire how their works are licensed or ultimately used. The methods mentioned above are for artists who desire to retain their rights completedly under copyright law.

For the people who desire that art be ‘released into the wild’, with no desire for profit, there are alternative licensing schemes. We’ll discuss Creative Commons Licensing schemes in the next post!