Photographers and Artists: Add Proxri Info to the Image Itself

If you post a public image to Facebook, they will let anyone download a nice high resolution version of it (like 1473 x 2048 pixels). Facebook will also strip out pretty much all of your metadata, including important things like the IPTC copyright status field with the copyright status and your copyright URL for getting in touch. On top of that, Facebook will change the filename to a bunch of numbers. Many other social media sites probably do the same (if you know, please post in the comments). WordPress leaves most of the critical IPTC info and does not change the filename to numbers, but I bet WordPress is an exception. In a recent upload, Facebook did leave my copyright notice in the metadata file info, and I included a website in that notice, but most people would not include a website there, and they removed all references to proxri in my metadata and the filename, and changed the copyright status field from Copyrighted to Unknown! Also, most people don’t open images in Photoshop and look in the metadata file info!

You might as well let people know how and where to proxri you! The facts mentioned above are why it’s important to add proxri information to the image file itself. Either on top of the image or just below the image. There’s an example at the end of this post, with a link to the original blog post. In addition to adding proxri info to the image itself, you can either provide links to our page called Rewards that Relate — Visual Works and Proxri near your images online, or include the downloadable PDF (linked to on that page) which has the same information, with your downloads or files you send people. However, if you provide a link to Rewards that Relate — Visual Works and Proxri, people will always have the most current version of it. Proxri were designed for our networked world. In contrast, most intellectual property law was not. To learn more, explore this site and also proxthink.com.

Here’s the example I mentioned, with the proxri info added below the image. The text is more legible if you click through to the original post or get higher resolution versions such as the one Facebook offered for download when I uploaded the full resolution version. (This particular WordPress theme seems to be downsizing the image, even though my settings say it should not.) I designed the text to be tasteful if people print the image on letter size paper and hang it, yet also be readable on most useable digital versions.

Here’s the direct link to the post with the image above, including some formatting you might want to adopt: http://loughry.com/2015/09/25/great-parking-spot/.