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You are here: Home / Blog / How to Copyright Photos in Photoshop

How to Copyright Photos in Photoshop

May 14, 2014 · 45 Comments

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If you think adding a simple watermark to your photos is a good way to add a copyright to your photos, think again. I used to think just adding a watermark was good enough. As bloggers, we take the time to create eye catching photos for our posts and we take great pride in them. Nothing hurts more than when we see another person using the photo we worked so hard on. I know this from experience. I had a person with a great following take a photo, crop the watermark out and tried to pass it off as their photo on Facebook. They gave my blog credit for the recipe with a link back, but posted the recipe on Facebook too. There was no real reason for someone to click the link. I bet the hundreds of people who shared the post had no idea. Lesson Learned: Watermarks can be cropped and no one likes plastering a watermark through the photo to make it visually unappealing.

I used to think just adding a watermark was good enough.Click To Tweet

You may be asking, How do I copyright my photos? You can add this information in the metadata of the photo and I will show you how. For this tutorial, I will be using Photoshop CS4.

How to Copyright Photos

How to Copyright Photos in Photoshop

So you have your beautiful photo you took and want to use in it your blog post. You want to protect the work that you have done. Assuming you have your photo open in Photoshop and all your edits are complete, it is time to add metadata to you photo. For the purpose of this tutorial, I will use the graphic above.

First, go to File->File Info

How to Copyright Photos Step 1It will bring up a box that looks like this:

How to Copyright Photos Step 2Under the Description tab, fill out the following: Document Title, Author, Keywords, Copyright Status, Copyright Notice, and Copyright Info URL as a minimum. The Keywords will help your image turn up in Google image searches. Also, make sure you have your URL correct by clicking on the Go To URL button. Please keep in mind that by saying it is copyrighted, isn’t the same asย applying for a legal copyright. However, this will deter most people from using your images.

Here is what mine looks like (click on the photo to bring it up larger if needed):

How to Copyright your Photos Step 3Once everything is typed in, click OK. You will notice a copyright symbol located next to your document title.

UPDATED (7/22/14): Now save your file for the web. When doing this, make sure you choose how much metadata you want saved with the file. Choosing “All” will save all your copyright information and camera information. Now you can upload your file to your site.

Want to see how to view this meta data? See my post on Finding Metadata in Photos.

How to Copyright Photos in Photoshop

You may notice I still use a small watermark at the bottom of some of my graphics. I do this just so people can visually see where it came from. I always make it small in a corner and I have the opacity down to 50 percent.

Great tutorial on how to place copyright information in Photoshop.Click To Tweet

Have you been adding copyright information to the photo’s metadata? How have you been protecting your photos?

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How to copyright your photos in photoshop. Step by step tutorial.
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About devon

Devon is a work at home mom and owner/editor at Midwestern Moms and Midwestern Meals. In her spare time you can find her hanging out with her family, curled up with her Kindle Fire, or playing computer games with her hubby.

Reader Interactions

Comments

  1. Allison says

    May 14, 2014 at 8:05 am

    Wow, awesome post! Thanks so much for the detail. This would have never occurred to me.

    Reply
    • devon says

      May 14, 2014 at 8:24 am

      Your Welcome, Allison.

      Reply
  2. Earl-Leigh says

    May 14, 2014 at 7:15 am

    I really needed this information! Thank you so much for taking the time to write such a detailed post.

    Reply
    • devon says

      May 14, 2014 at 8:24 am

      Your Welcome! Glad it was helpful.

      Reply
  3. Mandy says

    May 14, 2014 at 8:08 am

    Some day I will download photoshop and reteach myself how to use it! So far I have been pretty lucky and no one has stolen my photos, only my content which unfortunately I can’t prevent them from doing.

    Reply
    • devon says

      May 14, 2014 at 8:23 am

      I am sorry to hear that Mandy. ๐Ÿ™

      Reply
    • Racheal Parrott says

      December 7, 2017 at 2:26 am

      You can actually do all of this in camera without the use of Photoshop – depending on the camera. I have a Canon 700d & it allows me to add all the metadata in the camera. This makes it even more safe as opposed to adding it on afrerwards.

      Reply
  4. Meeghan says

    May 14, 2014 at 9:32 am

    I needed this. Thank you!

    Reply
    • devon says

      May 14, 2014 at 9:44 am

      Your Welcome.

      Reply
  5. Christen says

    May 14, 2014 at 11:05 am

    Thank you!! I am adding this to my Sverve tips, too!

    Reply
    • devon says

      May 14, 2014 at 11:08 am

      You’re Welcome. Thanks for the add!

      Reply
  6. Amber Albright says

    May 14, 2014 at 10:17 am

    Great job on the tutorial! I will definitely need this in the future. Thank you!

    Reply
    • devon says

      May 14, 2014 at 11:09 am

      You’re welcome! Happy to help. ๐Ÿ™‚

      Reply
  7. MryJhnsn (@mryjhnsn) says

    May 14, 2014 at 10:53 am

    Fantastic tutorial! You make it so easy, thank you!

    Reply
    • devon says

      May 14, 2014 at 11:08 am

      It is very easy. Only takes a few more minutes when you are working on your photo.

      Reply
  8. Mandy says

    May 22, 2014 at 6:23 am

    I did this and it worked great! I was wondering how someone knows that your picture is copyrighted once it’s uploaded on a social network?

    Reply
    • devon says

      May 22, 2014 at 9:36 am

      Mandy,
      This is a good question. I personally do not post the actual image on social networks. I normally just post links. I found this article really helpful. Apparently, Social Media networks strip all information from the photos. Only Google+ and Tumbler keep the information. If you plan to post the photo on social media, I would make sure to add a watermark.

      I will work on a post on how to find the metadata.

      Reply
  9. Andrea @ Cloud Nine Chic says

    May 29, 2014 at 1:44 pm

    Thanks so much for this Devon! I really needed this and it came at just the right time! ๐Ÿ˜€

    Reply
  10. Jill Levenhagen says

    July 22, 2014 at 12:23 pm

    Just FYI…our images are protected by Copyright Law from the moment we create them. We don’t have to do anything to have that protection in the US.
    You can register a work with the copyright office. While regular copyright protection will allow you to get a photo removed if it was stolen…registering will allow for financial damages to be paid with suing. I am a photographer. I never register copyrights.
    Always a good idea to add Copyright to metadata just for a source, but that can be deleted and re saved by the thief. Also , if you use the “Save for Web” in Photoshop, it will strip your metadata.
    Hope that helps! Don’t want bloggers to be too bogged down with more to do!

    Reply
    • devon says

      July 22, 2014 at 10:03 pm

      Jill,
      You are correct. Anyone can just delete the information and re-save the file with new information. However, I am glad you brought up the point about “Save for Web”. I missed a step in my tutorial. It is now updated. “Save for Web” does save your metadata. There is a drop down box for determining how much metadata is saved in the file. By choosing “All”, it saves the information you added and the camera information as well. I have also added a post on how to find metadata.

      I personally do not find it bogging me down. I am already in the file information to add keywords to my images. It takes a minimal amount of time to file in the title, author, copyright, notice, and url.

      Reply
    • Karin Markert says

      November 22, 2014 at 3:57 pm

      Exactly what I was going to say. Your photos are already copyright protected, w/ or w/o the info placed on the photo or in the metadata. Better to REGISTER the copyright protected images, too. That’s the only way to seriously protect your rights of your images. I’ve posted more info on this FB page: http://www.facebook.com/MYPhotoOnline. I’m betting many of you have seen one of my famously “stolen”/”borrowed” images floating around social media already: http://klmarkert.smugmug.com. I’ve learned a lot since losing control of one of my own photos. ๐Ÿ˜‰

      Reply
  11. Jodee Weiland says

    August 30, 2014 at 9:36 am

    Useful information to have…thanks for sharing!

    Reply
    • devon says

      August 30, 2014 at 9:39 am

      You’re Welcome!

      Reply
  12. Jill says

    September 15, 2014 at 7:13 am

    Thank you for writing this, great post and really useful information!

    Reply
  13. monica says

    March 26, 2015 at 5:02 pm

    Just wanted to let you know that while it’s a great post, you are misspelling “You’re welcome” on every comment response. You are saying “your” instead of “you’re”. Just trying to help…..

    Reply
    • devon says

      March 26, 2015 at 5:35 pm

      Gah! I will go back and change them. I wasn’t thinking when I typed all those. Thanks for letting me know.

      Reply
  14. Marybeth says

    April 23, 2015 at 10:51 pm

    I am just starting my own home studio so i am sure to need this!!!! Thank you so much

    Reply
  15. Jennifer says

    May 25, 2015 at 9:34 am

    How did I not know about this?! Thank you so so much for sharing! This is so awesome!

    Reply
    • devon says

      May 25, 2015 at 12:03 pm

      You’re Welcome Jennifer!

      Reply
  16. Lena says

    September 14, 2015 at 1:10 pm

    I had someone take one of the photos of our Champion dogs and tried to pass the dog off as their own on Facebook. I was alerted by someone else who recognized her and it took some doing but Facebook removed them plus they were inundated with emails from fellow breeders telling them how unethical they were. This will really help. Thank you.

    Reply
  17. Sabbir Rahman says

    November 16, 2015 at 5:23 am

    Yes, Devon you’re right, there are image pirates all around us, they will download your photos> remove your watermark> and then use it on their own name. So, using image file info is the best way to copywriter your image

    Reply
  18. Sam says

    November 17, 2015 at 12:55 pm

    Is there a way to do this in bulk? like say you edited a bunch of photos in lightroom and then want to open them up in Photoshop add this to the photos?

    Reply
    • devon says

      November 17, 2015 at 1:05 pm

      Sam,
      I am unsure about bulk editing. I am sorry. ๐Ÿ™

      Reply
  19. Heather says

    December 8, 2015 at 9:35 am

    Great article, will share for sure! Just a quick note….pinterest, facebook and I believe twitter all STRIP exif data when images are directly uploaded to their sites. So the watermark is what is left as the only means of making a potential thief move on to someone else’s image they don’t need to photoshop a watermark off of. The best bet is to upload images (if you want exif to stay intact) to flickr, 500px or your own website then “link” to those images on facebook as opposed to uploading them directly to facebook. I usually suggest people have their watermark say their web or blog address so that if someone is interested in legally using the image they can get in touch with the photographer ๐Ÿ˜‰

    Reply
  20. Vicci says

    January 4, 2016 at 12:56 am

    Thanks so much for this info. I never knew I would be able to copywrite my photos in this way. Will help a lot as I just officially started photography. ๐Ÿ™‚

    Reply
  21. Bernadette says

    January 8, 2016 at 10:28 am

    Is there a way to do it without photoshop? Thanks so much for your time & effort on a great post!

    Reply
    • devon says

      January 8, 2016 at 10:30 am

      I am not sure. What program are you looking at?

      Reply
  22. Salim Ahmed says

    January 27, 2016 at 10:51 am

    It’s a great tutorial for beginner. I’m beginner it’s needed to me.

    Reply
  23. Teresa says

    January 31, 2016 at 1:28 am

    Hi Devon,
    I just wanted to say thank you for this article.
    It will be a great help for when I start selling my photos.

    Reply
    • devon says

      January 31, 2016 at 8:44 am

      You’re Welcome! Good Luck!

      Reply
  24. Dianne A says

    February 12, 2016 at 12:55 pm

    There are many ways to do this without the full version of Photoshop (the learning curve is quite steep). Use Photoshop Elements instead or Irfanview (free & very popular). All of the copyright information can be added to the photos during the import process in Lightroom, thus eliminating the need to do it one at a time.

    Reply
    • devon says

      February 12, 2016 at 12:56 pm

      Thank you for the insight!!

      Reply
  25. Maxwell says

    July 29, 2016 at 12:30 am

    Something tells me that you don’t understand what a copyright is.

    Reply
    • devon says

      July 29, 2016 at 7:44 am

      Something tells me you didn’t read the whole article. I state this: “Please keep in mind that by saying it is copyrighted, isnโ€™t the same as applying for a legal copyright.”

      Reply
  26. Pete Arnett says

    October 25, 2016 at 10:56 am

    Great article, thank you for sharing this information.

    Reply

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Hi, I'm Devon. Midwestern mom of two boys. I love recipes, DIYs, crochet, essential oils, and coffee! Read More...

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