Clients printing images without permission from screen shots

[Big Mike]

Well, that's certainly more shady...but that's the risk we take with on-line proofing.
You can set up photo cart to watermark the photos, or you can do it yourself....and like someone mentioned...we're talking water marks over the whole shot.

You could also raise your sitting fee, and if people ask why, you could tell them that it's to make up for people stealing your images.

And this is yet again, another reason why an in-person sales appointment is the best way to sell prints. (I'm not there yet...but someday maybe).

 

[xposurepro]

We start out by doing all in-studio sales. There are no sneak peeks on a blog or Facebook. They see them during the ordering session and there are no proofs to take home or option for me to upload a gallery somewhere so they can goof around for a month looking at them before ordering. We have minimum purchase requirements based on the type of client session and what session options or add ons were selected. This prevents us from having to worry about somebody coming in and order 5 4x6s then scanning them and never coming back for more. The client is not left alone with their images displayed for them to snap off crappy shots with their cell phones (people will do that). When going over the product line we include the High-Res digital files stating they are $300 each and we clearly emphasize the fact that purchasing these files comes with the legal documentation that is required in order to make prints from the files we provide or if you want to scan the prints you purchase. Note we don't say "Yeah you can print from them" .. they are being clearly educated that legal documentation is required for printing from files AND for scanning prints. If they are the type of people who will do it no matter what it doesn't change anything. However, we have educated them on right and wrong and that's all you can do there.
Give them everything on Facebook and they will print them. In the past we only gave free Facebook pics of the poses that they purchased in their collection and those pics had a huge logo streaming across the bottom. This eliminated the desire to print from them. However, we took it a step further and now low-res files, just like high-res files, are an actual product with a value. This helps to further educate the consumer that digital files are in fact a product and by purchasing low-res files or by not doing so, it either increases our profit or reduces our workload.
When it comes to updating our online portfolio, this is not done right away. You won't find me posting on the blog .. "Check out these awesome portraits from todays client !!" .. or yesterdays .. or last weeks .. in fact it might be several months down the road before I might post something on the blog or Facebook. This is long after the ordering session and by this point if the client hasn't re-ordered odds are they won't anyway.

To sum it up ..
Online Shopping Carts = Bad
Sneak Peek Blog Posts = Bad
Free Facebook Images = Bad
Unsupervised Proof Access = Bad
Tiny Watermarks = Bad


Oh yeah and we also do not offer anything printed on glossy paper .. it's too easy to make a good re-print from at home.

 

[Kerbouchard]

We start out by doing all in-studio sales. There are no sneak peeks on a blog or Facebook. They see them during the ordering session and there are no proofs to take home or option for me to upload a gallery somewhere so they can goof around for a month looking at them before ordering. We have minimum purchase requirements based on the type of client session and what session options or add ons were selected. This prevents us from having to worry about somebody coming in and order 5 4x6s then scanning them and never coming back for more. The client is not left alone with their images displayed for them to snap off crappy shots with their cell phones (people will do that). When going over the product line we include the High-Res digital files stating they are $300 each and we clearly emphasize the fact that purchasing these files comes with the legal documentation that is required in order to make prints from the files we provide or if you want to scan the prints you purchase. Note we don't say "Yeah you can print from them" .. they are being clearly educated that legal documentation is required for printing from files AND for scanning prints. If they are the type of people who will do it no matter what it doesn't change anything. However, we have educated them on right and wrong and that's all you can do there.
Give them everything on Facebook and they will print them. In the past we only gave free Facebook pics of the poses that they purchased in their collection and those pics had a huge logo streaming across the bottom. This eliminated the desire to print from them. However, we took it a step further and now low-res files, just like high-res files, are an actual product with a value. This helps to further educate the consumer that digital files are in fact a product and by purchasing low-res files or by not doing so, it either increases our profit or reduces our workload.
When it comes to updating our online portfolio, this is not done right away. You won't find me posting on the blog .. "Check out these awesome portraits from todays client !!" .. or yesterdays .. or last weeks .. in fact it might be several months down the road before I might post something on the blog or Facebook. This is long after the ordering session and by this point if the client hasn't re-ordered odds are they won't anyway.

To sum it up ..
Online Shopping Carts = Bad
Sneak Peek Blog Posts = Bad
Free Facebook Images = Bad
Unsupervised Proof Access = Bad
Tiny Watermarks = Bad


Oh yeah and we also do not offer anything printed on glossy paper .. it's too easy to make a good re-print from at home.

Looking forward to your going out of business sale. Hope you have some good stuff I can use.

About 1 in 10 people on the entire freaking planet are on facebook. Something like 800 million users out there. If you won't provide people pics to share with their friends via social networking, I think you are destined to fail. We may not like what they do with the images once they get them, but, IMO, it's an essential service at this point.

If you won't offer them, your competition will.

 

[naptime]

in screen printing I often have to provide my customers a proof. They can run with that to a competitor if they like.

you have to make it difficult or undesirable.

if your watermark can be cropped, then its not big enough.

straight across the middle, or the most important part of the photo etc. Something that can't be edited out and is just going to look stupid. Otherwise, someone is going to print it and display it.

 

[BastiaanImages]

If you ever see this SIL I would definately talk to her about this. Don't pick a fight just tell her that you saw the image and that normally you'd charge for it because you're a pro-photographer and her method means you lose money. She probably didn't even think of it in this way.

off-topic: I can't image putting a low-res, badly cropped picture on my wall

 

[GeorgieGirl]

I went to a client / friends house for coffee the other day. As we were chatting, I noticed a horribly pixilated crappy framed image from her last session. It was a maternity shoot/family shoot with her bf's sister, husband and kid as well. When she saw me notice the picture she said, oh yeah, sister in law gave me that.

I said "I'm sorry you have such a poor quality print - SIL must have saved her screen and then cropped it. In the new year we can order you a professional print if you like." It's still upsetting me. They haven't purchased any of the images yet, even though everytime I see them they say they loved them.

How would you handle the same situation?

I'm not sure that I would consider them a friend any longer after what they just did to you.

There are always people who don't think the cost of prints are worth it to them and find ways to take a photo or two and print them for their benefit anyway even if the print is of a diminsihed quality. But if your relationship was one where you considered them a friend; they don't appear to respect you. Yes they think the photos are good, from what I have seen of your work I am sure they were and you have no reason to doubt that.

I think as a phtographer you have to drop this client, and to take it a step further it might be necessary to remove that session from your site so they don't help themselves to any more of your work since you know that they have. You can do all of this without having to have a dialog with them. If they ever do ask where the photos went, you can speak with them about the incident as a professional, and not as a friend.

:cry:

 

[Robin Usagani]

It wont bother me one bit. On my portrait session they either pay low session fee and they must buy prints from me, OR buy ALL files from a reasonable price. Everyone always choose to buy all files. Really though, how much do you charge for a 4x6? I bet they can only print a 4x6 from a screen capture. How much money did you lose? Nothing to be upset about.

 

[manaheim]

I've been of the mind to simply sell digital only and not bother with the prints. "If you want your pictures, you pay in full and then you get the images." Done and done. Not sure how well this would work, but it seems like an easier way to address the whole problem.

I'd be curious what the pros here think about this.

xposurepro's post is educational and alarming.

 

[Robin Usagani]

If it is a portrait session you need to sell ALL or NONE. If you sell the digital one by one, it will make the price too expensive if they want all the photos, but then again it is too cheap if they only buy a few files and print big prints them self.

For events photos I do sell the file one by one.

I've been of the mind to simply sell digital only and not bother with the prints. "If you want your pictures, you pay in full and then you get the images." Done and done. Not sure how well this would work, but it seems like an easier way to address the whole problem.

I'd be curious what the pros here think about this.

xposurepro's post is educational and alarming.

 

[xposurepro]

We start out by doing all in-studio sales. There are no sneak peeks on a blog or Facebook. They see them during the ordering session and there are no proofs to take home or option for me to upload a gallery somewhere so they can goof around for a month looking at them before ordering. We have minimum purchase requirements based on the type of client session and what session options or add ons were selected. This prevents us from having to worry about somebody coming in and order 5 4x6s then scanning them and never coming back for more. The client is not left alone with their images displayed for them to snap off crappy shots with their cell phones (people will do that). When going over the product line we include the High-Res digital files stating they are $300 each and we clearly emphasize the fact that purchasing these files comes with the legal documentation that is required in order to make prints from the files we provide or if you want to scan the prints you purchase. Note we don't say "Yeah you can print from them" .. they are being clearly educated that legal documentation is required for printing from files AND for scanning prints. If they are the type of people who will do it no matter what it doesn't change anything. However, we have educated them on right and wrong and that's all you can do there.
Give them everything on Facebook and they will print them. In the past we only gave free Facebook pics of the poses that they purchased in their collection and those pics had a huge logo streaming across the bottom. This eliminated the desire to print from them. However, we took it a step further and now low-res files, just like high-res files, are an actual product with a value. This helps to further educate the consumer that digital files are in fact a product and by purchasing low-res files or by not doing so, it either increases our profit or reduces our workload.
When it comes to updating our online portfolio, this is not done right away. You won't find me posting on the blog .. "Check out these awesome portraits from todays client !!" .. or yesterdays .. or last weeks .. in fact it might be several months down the road before I might post something on the blog or Facebook. This is long after the ordering session and by this point if the client hasn't re-ordered odds are they won't anyway.

To sum it up ..
Online Shopping Carts = Bad
Sneak Peek Blog Posts = Bad
Free Facebook Images = Bad
Unsupervised Proof Access = Bad
Tiny Watermarks = Bad


Oh yeah and we also do not offer anything printed on glossy paper .. it's too easy to make a good re-print from at home.

Looking forward to your going out of business sale. Hope you have some good stuff I can use.

About 1 in 10 people on the entire freaking planet are on facebook. Something like 800 million users out there. If you won't provide people pics to share with their friends via social networking, I think you are destined to fail. We may not like what they do with the images once they get them, but, IMO, it's an essential service at this point.

If you won't offer them, your competition will.

My competition does offer them .. and they also struggle to make a profit too. I on the other hand don't care about the 800 million people on Facebook who cringe at the thought of our $400 minimum purchase. I prefer shooting the ones who can drop a couple grand on family photos and as I'm swiping their card they just laugh and say Whew I should have been a photographer .. then they go out and tell those in their real world circles about how happy they were with the experience. We realized a long time ago that although social media like Facebook brought us in front of the masses it did not have an effect on bringing in the top-end clients. Those clients are still more influenced by traditional means. They might check us out online before coming in for a consultation but that's not "why" they checked us out. Many of our big spenders make it all the way to session day without ever once looking at us on Facebook or sometimes even our website. They're going purely on real world interactions and influences. In fact this year we have had a major percentage of new clients traveling from a specific area an hour away .. to the point we are considering relocating closer to it as it is also a very high-income location. Interesting enough is that online marketing played an extremely little part .. they came through traditional loyalty & referral programs. Facebook is not "the" answer .. it's simply the easy one.

 

[Kerbouchard]

Must have been my mistake. I had looked at your website and all of the threads you have started on this forum.

Definitely did not have you pegged for any sort of high end market. Obviously, different ends of the market can bare different things.

We start out by doing all in-studio sales. There are no sneak peeks on a blog or Facebook. They see them during the ordering session and there are no proofs to take home or option for me to upload a gallery somewhere so they can goof around for a month looking at them before ordering. We have minimum purchase requirements based on the type of client session and what session options or add ons were selected. This prevents us from having to worry about somebody coming in and order 5 4x6s then scanning them and never coming back for more. The client is not left alone with their images displayed for them to snap off crappy shots with their cell phones (people will do that). When going over the product line we include the High-Res digital files stating they are $300 each and we clearly emphasize the fact that purchasing these files comes with the legal documentation that is required in order to make prints from the files we provide or if you want to scan the prints you purchase. Note we don't say "Yeah you can print from them" .. they are being clearly educated that legal documentation is required for printing from files AND for scanning prints. If they are the type of people who will do it no matter what it doesn't change anything. However, we have educated them on right and wrong and that's all you can do there.
Give them everything on Facebook and they will print them. In the past we only gave free Facebook pics of the poses that they purchased in their collection and those pics had a huge logo streaming across the bottom. This eliminated the desire to print from them. However, we took it a step further and now low-res files, just like high-res files, are an actual product with a value. This helps to further educate the consumer that digital files are in fact a product and by purchasing low-res files or by not doing so, it either increases our profit or reduces our workload.
When it comes to updating our online portfolio, this is not done right away. You won't find me posting on the blog .. "Check out these awesome portraits from todays client !!" .. or yesterdays .. or last weeks .. in fact it might be several months down the road before I might post something on the blog or Facebook. This is long after the ordering session and by this point if the client hasn't re-ordered odds are they won't anyway.

To sum it up ..
Online Shopping Carts = Bad
Sneak Peek Blog Posts = Bad
Free Facebook Images = Bad
Unsupervised Proof Access = Bad
Tiny Watermarks = Bad


Oh yeah and we also do not offer anything printed on glossy paper .. it's too easy to make a good re-print from at home.

Looking forward to your going out of business sale. Hope you have some good stuff I can use.

About 1 in 10 people on the entire freaking planet are on facebook. Something like 800 million users out there. If you won't provide people pics to share with their friends via social networking, I think you are destined to fail. We may not like what they do with the images once they get them, but, IMO, it's an essential service at this point.

If you won't offer them, your competition will.

My competition does offer them .. and they also struggle to make a profit too. I on the other hand don't care about the 800 million people on Facebook who cringe at the thought of our $400 minimum purchase. I prefer shooting the ones who can drop a couple grand on family photos and as I'm swiping their card they just laugh and say Whew I should have been a photographer .. then they go out and tell those in their real world circles about how happy they were with the experience. We realized a long time ago that although social media like Facebook brought us in front of the masses it did not have an effect on bringing in the top-end clients. Those clients are still more influenced by traditional means. They might check us out online before coming in for a consultation but that's not "why" they checked us out. Many of our big spenders make it all the way to session day without ever once looking at us on Facebook or sometimes even our website. They're going purely on real world interactions and influences. In fact this year we have had a major percentage of new clients traveling from a specific area an hour away .. to the point we are considering relocating closer to it as it is also a very high-income location. Interesting enough is that online marketing played an extremely little part .. they came through traditional loyalty & referral programs. Facebook is not "the" answer .. it's simply the easy one.

 

[KmH]

Hmmm keep us updated should you choose to take further action. I'm kinda curious as to what you can realistically do in this situation.

What we can do here in the US and what you can do in CA is substantially different.

However I note that the OP doesn't show a location in her profile so I am only guessing she is somewhere in the USA.

In Canada, the copyright is owned by whoever commisions the photography, ostensibly the client, unless the photographer's contract states otherwise.
Here in the US the photographer owns the copyright, unless the photographer's contract states otherwise.

Here in the US, the photographer cannot file a copyright infringement action in federal court if the copyright has not been registered with the US copyright office (USC 17 411).

I'd bet the OP has never registered a copyright.

In that case, the OP has no legal leverage, making enforcement of her copyright virtually impossible. Her only legal recourse would be a civil, breach of contract action.

The best way to educate clients is with language in the contract, and then making sure the client is aware of the copyright issues by going over the contract with them.

 

[gsgary]

I should clarify they were taken from the proofing on my website. I use photocart so there is no right click saving so it was a screenshot save.

Take them off your website and see if they say anything

 

[imagemaker46]

Everything on my site is automatically watermarked, and there is no right click save, but people still use the screen shots and try to remove the watermarks, I have tracked several people down and have worked out deals with them to use low res copies for their web sites and in return they link back to mine. They don't get alot but I get more traffic sent my way. Unfortuantely you can't stop everyone that is doing this.

 

[etnad0]

I've been doing web work since I was 15 and there are several good ways to stop photo theft. An upfront deposit is one way. As somenoe else mentioned, you can do something like this:

Most people aren't desperate enough to steal and display this in a frame in their home. Visitors will see that its clearly stolen and the average person doesn't have the photoshop skills to remove the mark without making it look like crap.

As someone else mentioned, disable right click as well. Both the above example and the disable of right click will prevent most thieves. Even if they take a screen shot, again, they would have to invest hours into getting it to look like crap in the end.

A small deposit upfront will ensure you at least make some cash. Even if it's only 20% of the entire purchase. Many companies require deposits for different services, so there shouldn't be any reason you can't require a deposit for your time. If they don't pay for the prints, you still got paid. Just my 2 cents.