I decided to try adding a copyright watermark to my photo hosting site. What do you think of this practice? It obviously helps deter image theft, but does it also deter legitimate potential customers? If someone purchases a download or a print the watermark will not be there, but does everyone realize this? I would hate to lose a customer because they didn’t want a print with my copyright logo on it and thought that’s how it would be delivered.
I would love to hear from other photographers selling their work to know if they have had a positive or negative experience with this. Please let me know!
Camera: Canon EOS T1i, Exposure Time: 1/800, Aperture: f/2.8, ISO: 100, Focal Length: 105mm
If you enjoy my photographs please consider making a purchase. All of the proceeds from the sale will go directly to help support our friends volunteering at the Seed of Hope in South Africa which is a great organization really making a difference in the community. Every little bit makes a difference, even a small digital download for your desktop!
Steve Boer Photography 
No, a copyright on the image doesn’t chill image sales. I license images and sell prints and I’ve never seen any confusion about the matter. “Watermarking” is often putting a mark over the whole image, not just a signature like you’ve done and I do for my images. A large watermark is harder to remove but more disfiguring. Good luck with sales!
Thanks for the comment. I agree about large watermarks being disfiguring. I totally understand why the stock photo sites do that and realize that without it an image such as ours can still be taken and just cropped. However, I would rather have my viewers get the full impact of my images without covering too much of them up or putting the copyright in the middle of the photo somewhere.
interested in applying to some images of artworks I do, is there an application I can use
I use a free program called Gimp. It’s really powerful and with it I was able to put the text I wanted. I saved it as a .png file so that the background would be transparent (you can’t do that with a .jpg). From there you can fairly simply copy and paste it onto your pictures. In my case I didn’t have to manually do that to each picture because the photo hosting site I use (smugmug) has a feature that lets me just upload the .png file and automatically apply it to all of the images that I choose.