Design Basics - Adobe Photoshop CS6 Essentials - page 19

Watermark your images. Traditional watermarks are recognizable symbols
that appear within the structure of paper in transmitted or reflected light and
are used to identify the paper maker. Digital watermarks serve the same pur-
pose in identifying the maker of an image. However, electronic watermarks can
be visible or invisible. Visible watermarks can be as subtle as your business logo
or name in the corner of each image, faded out to avoid competing with the
images, or as obvious as big red opaque X in the middle of each image, greatly
deterring the theft of your intellectual property (but also making the image
harder to enjoy viewing). Invisible watermarks encoded within image data can
be used to prove that an image is your intellectual property.

O

another approach
to protecting intel-
lectual property is to
post low-resolution
thumbnails on your
website and offer
password-protected
high-resolution files
suitable for printing
for sale.

Using others' Images

There are many sources of digital images made by other people. However, before
you use images made by others, it is your responsibility to determine whether you
have the right to do so. For example, many of the images on Wikipedia ( www
.wikipedia.org ) and Wikimedia Commons ( http://commons.wikimedia.org )
have Creative Commons licenses, which forge a balance between the “all rights
reserved” copyright model and releasing something into the public domain by
granting specific abilities to share, remix, and/or reuse digital content. In some
cases there are legal exceptions allowing you to fairly use copyrighted material
without acquiring permission from the copyright holders. Finally, paying a fee
for stock photographic content is another common route to licensing images
made by others.

Using creative commons images Creative Commons ( www.creativecommons
.org ) is a nonprofit organization offering a set of licenses supporting cultural
innovation on the Internet and elsewhere. All Creative Commons licenses
require that you attribute the work in a manner specified by the author or licen-
sor (but not in a way that suggests that they endorse you or your use of the
work). Some of the Creative Commons licenses stipulate noncommercial use
only and some disallow derivative works; others allow derivative and/or com-
mercial works. You must be careful to find images allowing the particular uses
you have in mind.

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Under copyright law,
works in the public
domain may be used
by anyone without
the need to acquire
permission or attri-
bute the author and
with no restriction
on making derivative
and/or commercial
works.

Understanding fair use and fair dealing In many countries, specific excep-
tions to copyright law allow you to use copyrighted images without permission
under certain circumstances. In the United States, fair use is the doctrine that
enables commentary, criticism, news reporting, teaching, scholarship, and
library archiving of copyrighted images. In Canada and other common law
jurisdictions, a similar but more restrictive principle called fair dealing applies.