Copyright Awareness
Copyrighting allows the photographer (The author) to protect their work against plagiarism and theft if the work is used without prior permission. The current act is the Copyright, Designs and Patents act 1988. It covers various types of work including artistic, musical, film and dramatic etc.
When you produce a piece of work you automatically own the copyright. Copyrighting your work allows you to have legal protection should you have to act on the misuse of your work.
A simple way to copyright your work, in this case photographs or photoshop files. Is to add metadata that holds encrypted information within the file. This will ensure that every time you open a document through Photoshop if is copyrighted with your information.
Here is a step by step guide on how to add copyright data to your files through Photoshop.
Step 1. Create a blank document, select file info from the file menu.
Enter the authors name and copyright details in the relevant fields. Then export the data by selecting export from the template drop-down menu.
Step 2. Create a new action set. Select actions from the window drop down menu. In the window pop-up click create new set. Rename the set so it is easy to locate.
Step 3. Ensure the new set is highlighted and click add new action. I have called this action "Copyright 2016" Then click record.
Step 3. You are now recording everything you do in Photoshop
Step 4. Go to the file menu and select file info. Then select import from the template menu.
Step 5. Select the metadata template you created earlier from your files.
Step 6. Make sure the option "Keep original metadata, but append matching properties from template" is selected. Then click ok, this will close the file info boxes.
Step 7. Stop recording. To do this, click stop in the actions window.
Step 8. Go to File, Scripts, Script Events Manager. This will open a new window.
Step 9. Tick the "Enable Events to Run Scripts/Actions" box. Click the drop-down menu next to Photoshop Events. Select Open document. Click action, select the set and action you created earlier from the relevant drop-down menus. Click done.
Now every time you open a document in Photoshop it is encrypted with the data you inputted earlier. It will copyright your images automatically.
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