How to Protect Your Images by Adding a Copyright to Metadata

Photographs get stolen every day online. It's a problem many photographers face. Hoarding your work will not get you noticed, but putting your work online opens it up to being stolen. Personally, I add my watermark to images I share on Social Media, but anyone worth their salt in Photoshop can remove them fairly easily. So, what else can you do to help protect your hard work?

I would recommend resizing to a non-printable resolution, something less than 300dpi. See my article about printing for more information about that.

Also, you should embed your copyright into the metadata of the image. If they remove the watermark, your information will still be embedded in the image file. It's a process that can be easily done in Lightroom. Here's how to embed your copyright.

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Step 1: You will need to be in the Library Module in Lightroom.





Step 2: In the Metadata panel dropdown choose "EXIF and ITPC." (Some of the others work as well, they are just different formats of information. You can look at each one to see what each offers.)





Step 3: Click the dropdown for "Preset." The default is "None."





Step 4: Select "Edit Presets..." from the dropdown.





Step 5: The "Edit Metadata Presets" window will open. In the "IPTC Copyright" section add your information to the "Copyright" field. (Note: You can type the © symbol by pressing Alt/Option and G on your keyboard on a Mac, or by pressing and holding Alt while typing 0169 on Windows. More info on that here.)





Step 6: Click the dropdown for "Copyright Status" and select "Copyrighted." (Note: As you can see there are numerous fields for information if you want to add it, just remember it will be saved in this Preset.)





Step 7: We want to save it as a preset so at the top of the "Edit Metadata Presets" window, click the dropdown for "Preset."





Step 8: Select "Save Current Settings as New Preset..."





Step 9: This brings up the "New Preset" dialogue box. Enter a name for your preset.





Step 10: After you have entered a name for your preset, click the "Create" button.





Step 11: You should see your new preset name at the top of the "Edit Metadata Presets" window. Click the "Done" button.





Step 12: Now, click the "Preset" dropdown under the Metadata panel.





Step 13: You should now be able to select the Preset you just created.





Step 14: Right click your image and select "Export" and from the next dropdown "Export."





Step 15: The "Export One File" window will open. Scroll down to the "Metadata" section.





Step 16: Select the "Include" dropdown and choose from the list what you want to include or embed into your file. I usually choose "Copyright Only" since that is mainly what I need.





Step 17: Now click the "Export" button. (Note: you have many options and settings inside the "Export One File" box, such as choosing the file location, resizing, naming, etc. Be sure to check out all the options.)



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Steps 18-21 are just done as an example to verify that our copyright is embedded. Also, wanted to add this so that you can see how to check for yourself.
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Step 18: Now we can load our image to Facebook. Once your images is on Facebook, click for the full screen version, then right click the image and choose "Copy Image Address." (Note: I am just using Facebook as an example, you should be able to do this from most Social media and webpages.)





There are many out there online, but this one is my personal favorite. Right click in the "URL" box and click "Paste."




Step 20: Verify that you are not a robot, and click the "View Image Data" button.





Step 21: This will give you the available metadata from the image. You can see the "©2016 April Bryant" copyright is present.



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Hope you found this tutorial helpful and that you can now add another level of security to your images.

Happy Shooting! Much Love!

April Bryant is the author of The Simple Guide to Great Photography and The Simple Guide to Great Composition (available on Amazon), a member of the US Press Association, a Getty Images photographer, and owns and operates HoiPolloiPhotography.com and AprilBryant.com. Her work has been published by the Sierra Club and Photoshop User Magazine as well as several publications local to East Tennessee. Find her on Facebook, Twitter, and Instagram!


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