Copyrighting your own picture is a good way to protect your intellectual properties against thieves on the Internet. A lot of amateur photographers take excellent quality pictures and post them on the Internet for others to enjoy. However, lots of people take the pictures and claim them as their own on their own website. If you copyright your own pictures, chances are thieves cannot take them that easily.
Open your picture in Adobe Photoshop. Create a transparent layer on top of the original photo. Go to the text box in the tool box and write in © date of publication, your name or professional photographer's business company name and all rights reserved. Then save the photo as a JPEG. Now the photo has the copyright marker over it and nobody can just take it and claim it as their own.
Read More: How to Copyright Pictures
Create a watermark over the image. If a person places this photo on his website, the visitor will known who's photo it is. The "thief" won't be able to crop out the watermark.
Register the photo with the U.S. Copyright Office. You must register within a certain time after the photo has been published online or elsewhere, and before any violation of copyright has taken place to be able to get an attorney to recover from damage done when copyright is violated.
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