Photo protection(copyright) and storage question

Whitehawk

First time poster in this area so hope you can help out

My father loves taking photos has all the top end slrs and all this stuff i really dont understand but he seems to take a few damm good photos

hes looking for a site to store them online and as im the pc person in the family he asked me however my worry is that someone could take his photos and sell them, (well some of them) so im hoping someone here could point me in the right direction for photo storage as he wants people to be able to view them and if they like some maybe even buy them!

is there anything out there that you all use? the copyright on the photos is the thing im really looking at as i just odnt think flicker would cut it but as im not a photo person i really just dont know!!


sry for the long winded post! as this is not really my sort of field so dont really know where im going with this :P

PCPhoto

at present the only way I know of stopping your images from being stolen is not to upload them to a website.

you could watermark them and upload them in low res only - which will deter people and possibly stop people from printing them.

Pix.ie and Flickr both offer some methods of watermarking and restricting image size.
Alternatively - he could have the images saved online in password protected folders - so only people he gives the password to will have access.

it depends on if there's a market for his images - as to whether people will try to steal them

Whitehawk

ya ill check out them sites cheers,

ya he mostly takes photos of nature and landscape and all that, some are real good stock images for websites etc or even just for a home wall kinda thing!

PCPhoto

make sure a strong watermark across the center of the image ...some people will rob an image if they get a chance.

I believe Flickr allow for sales through Getty images - if your dad is interested in earning some money (if someone is interested).

The Snipe

Try Picasa, or purchasing a webhosting package and uploading them to your own domain - and protecting the directory, so that it can't be viewed, and only accessed by one FTP Account.

Necronomicon

Google's Picasa Web would be a good option as mentioned above.

https://picasaweb.google.com

You can make the folders private and send invites via email.

Ballyman

If it's just storage he wants then get a pro account on flickr and upload them there. You can add privacy settings to them so you can hide them from people and they will be secure and only he will have access to them. I think a pro account costs about €25 per year.

Whitehawk

Thanks all for this info ill go have a look around and see what one suits us best.

dmg1982

A few recommendations here:

- Have a look at photoshelter.com ... could be exactly what you're after as a solution to display and sell images.
- Tell your Dad to ensure to include copyright and contact information in the metadata of his image files.
- You can use (free) services like TinEye to search the web for other sites/people using your images with or without permission
- Watermarking is an option, but they can detract from an image in my opinion, especially a landscape image if they're sprawled across the center of the frame

Anyone who 'steals' images from Flickr can clearly see whether they're covered by copyright, creative commons or free to use. Not sure if this is the same for pix.ie (perhaps someone else can confirm?)

And somewhat unrelated to the above, for a plain and simple secure online backup I use backblaze.com and couldn't be happier with it. Note that it's just data backup, not for selling or displaying images, but it's vital to have an up-to-date backup of your image files off-site if you're serious about making income from them.

Hope that helps!