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. 

Let’s start with an image.  How about this?

I’ve got the image open in Photoshop, now let’s get a texture file.  I choose 2LO Spirt29

Now let’s put them together.  To do that. I just have to drop the texture file onto the orchid image.

Then move the texture file to fill the image area of the orchid.

You’ll now see two layers displayed on your Layers Tab, one for the orchid image and one for the Texture file.

Now we are going to blend them.

First, make sure you have the top Layer, the Texture Layer highlighted.  

Now we are going to adjust the blending of the two Layers.  To do that, select the drop-down box marked Normal and all the possible Blending Options appear.

This next part is where you make the artistic decision on which Layer Blending option to use.

In this case, I choose Screen.  Then I adjusted the opacity on the Texture Layer until it looked the way I wanted.

 And here’s what I got.

The Texture and Orchid blended together well.

BUT,   

I want to add one more step. I want to remove some of the Texture from the Orchid petals.  So, I’m going to use the eraser tool.  The hardness is set to zero. 

Then I just erase away the parts of the Texture I don’t want.   

And here’s what I ended up with.

One other option would be to use the Texture Layer as a Layer mask and paint the Texture in where ever you want it.

One of the common questions I’m asked during a training session is, “Now that my camera has been converted, can I clean my sensor?” What concerns most people they know that something was done to their camera’s sensor, but they are not entirely sure what. 

Yes, the self-cleaning function has been disabled, but the short answer is Yes, you can still clean your sensor. 

Will you need to clean your Infrared converted camera more often?  That really depends on your shooting conditions.  In extreme conditions, like on an African Safari where there is a large number of airborne particulates (dust), yes it will get affected sooner.  In other conditions, I can go for much longer periods before I need to clean.

Now if you’re not familiar with how to tell if you need to clean your sensor, let’s take a look at this image. 

This is a Super Color image at 590nm.  The image itself is nice, but man is this sensor in need of cleaning.  Just look at all the … stuff on it.  There are dust spots and hair.  Remember what I said earlier about Africa?  Here’s what I was talking about.

Even after the image is channel swapped they still show.

With a little work in Photoshop, we could hide those dust spots and hair, but this sensor needs to be cleaned. 

The thing about sensor cleaning on an Infrared camera is it is just the same as before it was converted.  So, if you are comfortable cleaning your sensor, go right ahead.

However, if you are not comfortable cleaning your sensor, I am not suggesting you should undertake this job yourself.   There are plenty of places you can take your camera to have the sensor cleaned.

If you are comfortable cleaning your sensor, this next part is for you. 

There are several different ways to clean your sensor, and I am not going to go into each method or endorse using a particular product, but I do want to make a couple of suggestions.

1. Only clean your sensor when you have enough time to take your time.  This is not something you want to rush through.

2.Invest in a decent sensor scope.  This will give you the ability to actually see the spots and other debris on the surface of your sensor.

3.Be gentle.  I cannot stress this enough.  Brute force is NOT the way to clean a sensor.

Now I want to address this last part head-on.  There’s a suggestion floating around that the solution to cleaning your sensor is to just put one lens on your camera and never remove it.  From an artistic standpoint that is just dumb.  You want to have the ability to use all your lenses with your Infrared converted camera.