The tabs we’re concerned with are Description and IPTC, you should recognize some of the fields from our work in Bridge. Start Photoshop and create a new image.ģ. In Photoshop you can create a template to fill in some fields for you.ġ. You don’t want to have to open Bridge and type out all that information every time you make a new image (I never want to open Bridge). All done! Click one of the images to confirm, then upload everything back to your FTP, overwriting your old files. Fill out the desired fields, especially Creator, Creator Website(s), Copyright Notice, Copyright Status, and Rights Usage Terms (this is where you put ©Your Name, All Rights Reserved). Open the Metadata Panel ( Window > Metadata Panel) and click one of the pencils on the right. Select all by going to Edit > Select All or Ctrl+A.Ĥ. You should now be looking at thumbnails of all your images. If your images are organized into folders select View > Show Items from Subfolders and uncheck View > Show Folders.
You can also use free tools, but your mileage may vary.ģ. I am not a fan of Bridge, but this is one thing it’s actually good at.
Make another local copy, or a ZIP of your entire site in case something goes wrong.Ģ.
Having an exact copy of your website on your hard drive is good practice anyway.
Download all your images, or your whole site if it makes it easier, using FTP. The first thing you’ll want to do is add metadata to all the images you have online, so that when your image goes walkabout, your name and contact information go with it.ġ. The metadata I’m talking about in this tutorial is IPTC, but all you need to know is that by the end you’ll be able to embed your name, website, email, phone number, address and copyright into every image-automagically. You might already be familiar with EXIF metadata added to JPGs by digital cameras, scanners and phones. It’s like a little text file appended to files only adding a few bytes to the total file size. Metadata is data about data-like the Created and Modified dates you see attached to every file on your computer.
Wouldn’t it be great if you could tuck your name, website and keywords and copyright information into every image to avoid this situation? You can-using Metadata. Months or even years down the road they might find your image floating in a random folder, uselessly renamed li4tceEqMb1qe.jpg by Tumblr, your name & website address croppped by an ignorant blogger leaving TinEye with no results. This happens more often than you think art directors are constantly grabbing images whenever and wherever they see them, but seldom have the time to organize them and make note of where they came from (they should really be using Evernote). Times when your images are inevitably downloaded, blogged, cropped, reblogged, faved and saved, and end up orphaned on someone’s hard drive, ffffound, imgfave, tumblr, or email-especially when that person likes your work and would really love to hire you, if they could just figure out where the image came from. In this tutorial I’m not talking about protection from image thiefs, I’m talking about protection from lost opportunities. These attempts only mar your work and make your site difficult to navigate. Watermarks are easily removed and website scripts are defeated with a simple screen grab.
There is little you can do to stop someone who is determined to steal your images.