Create a Copyright Image Overlay for Your Photos

You can embed your copyright information into your photos to deter people from printing or using your photos as their own. When someone moves their cursor over your photo, your copyright message displays. Adobe® Photoshop®, Corel® Paint Shop Pro®, and The Gimp are several photo-editing applications that you can use to embed your copyright message. In addition to the photo-editing application, you need an HTML or text editor and access to your Web page source.

To Add your Copyright Information to your Images

  1. Open the image you want to edit. Here is an example in Photoshop:

    2. get image size

  2. Add the copyright text to your image. For example, we added the phrase Copyright © 2007 John Smith to our image.
    1. Select white as your foreground color.
    2. From the Tools palette, select the Type tool.
    3. Click where you want to add the text to your photo, and type your copyright message.

    3. add copyright

  3. Adjust the image color to create a greater contrast with the white text.
    1. Select the background layer (the original image) and from the Image menu, selectAdjustments>Brightness/Contrast.
    2. Change the Brightness and Contrast to 25%.
    3. Save your new image file.

    The original image is darker making the copyright information clearly visible.

    my image - darkened

To Embed the Image in your Web Page

  1. Open your Web page with your HTML or text editor and find where you want to embed the image.
  2. Place your cursor in the code where you want to add the image and type the following code (where myimage.jpg is the name of your image):
    <img src="myimage.jpg" title="my hiking trip" />
  3. To add the rollover effect, modify the code to include:
    <img src="myimage.jpg" title="my hiking trip" onmouseover="this.src='myimage_dark.jpg';return true" onmouseout="this.src='myimage.jpg';return true"/>