They say you haven’t arrived as an artist until someone steals your image.  If you’ve ever had it happen, you know what a disheartening thing it is, you feel violated and very angry.  There are even websites where you can take an image directly from social media and order a print of the image.

So, what can you do?

Well, you can try what lots of photographers do and put the copyright logo on your images.    If you put it in the corner, that area can be cropped out and then printed. Putting it in the middle is an option.

That though can really distract from the image.

I have seen a photographer who does the example below, but I have to wonder why they even bother posting.

So, once again, what can you do?

Well, you can make it so if they steal your image it is of little to no use.  The way you do that is by re-sizing your images, or if you want to take it a step further, web optimize your image.

It’s very easy, lets take a look.

Her’s my image.

 If I select properies of this image, we see that this image is it is currently 9MB.

To resize the image in Photoshop, go to Image, then Image Size.

When the dialog box appears, make certain the aspect ratio is locked.  When it’s locked, there will be a line from the top and botom of the lock icon as you see in the picture below.

You will also want to have your width and height set to Pixels.  Just click the drop down box and select pixels.

Now you will change the size of your image by selecting the widest part of the image, the width or height with the largest number, and change that number to 1200. 

 The smaller number will automatically adjust. In this example image we took the image from 3726 by 2484 pixels down to 1200 by 800 pixels.  At 1200by 800 pixels your image will now look great on any computer screen, tablet or mobile device.

Next click OK and then sleect Save As 

Now this important, you want to change the name of the file so that you don’t overwrite the original file.

So, we’ve resized our image and it still looks the same, but let’s check out the new properties.  When we started, the image file was 9MB.

Now it’s only 562KB.  To take it a setp further, consider Web optimizing your image.

To Web Optimze it, there is an additional step.

Go to File, then Export, then select Save for Web (legacy)

When the dialog box appears, I usually go with the auto settings, (Jpg High) but you can change anything as you prefer.

And then select Save. 

Now, Our image that started off as a 9MB file is now just 172KB. 

Your image will look great on a screen, but if someone steals this file, it will be of little to no use as it is too small to do anything with. 

There’s how to protect your images by resizing and web optimizing.