If you are not charging for the photos, why take shots of other peoples' kids? Just concentrate on taking shots of your own kids and let other people either photograph their own kids or leave it to a professional who will charge for the shots... or start charging.

The answer to people who don't want to pay for them is:

IT COSTS A LOT OF MONEY AND TIME INVESTED TO TAKE PHOTOS... THE IMAGES HAVE VALUE AND SHOULD NOT JUST BE GIVEN AWAY FREELY!

Further, unrelated to the questions of copyright and protection of its ownership, taking photos of other peoples' kids and posting them online you really should have a release signed by an parent or guardian. Some day you may get a "cease and desist" letter (not a big deal, so long as you take down the images immediately, except that all your time and effort were wasted). Or, much worse, there's some risk that your images may be used in an undesirable way and you could possibly become an unintentional party to slander or a crime, and possibly even subject to criminal or civil charges and penalties. I no longer post a kid's image online unless their parent or guardian has signed a release for it. In fact, I generally require adults to sign a release, too.

Back to the subject at hand...

I always watermark or "sign" anything that's going to be displayed online. To provide complete copyright protection, it doesn't need to be the copyright symbol or date (the law about that changed 15 or 20 years ago). It can be any unique identifier... such as a signature or even a symbol (as in "the artist formerly known as Prince" used for a while, at least until he legally changed it back to "Prince" :roll: ).

My watermark is basically an ad: my name and URL to help drive people to my galleries. I figure if someone is going to steal my image, they're also are going to do some advertising for me. I also only post lower resolution images online... 500 to 700 pixels on the long side. Too small to make prints, but big enough to preview the image and share it on Facebook, etc., which is what's done with most "stolen" images.

Removal of a watermark is not impossible, but can be made fairly difficult and impractical for most people at certain skill levels. Removing it without permission also can result in a fine of up to $30,000 per instance (in addition to other awards for copyright infringement).

A watermark doesn't have to "ruin" an image, but tucking one into a corner where it's easily trimmed off is pretty much a waste of time, IMO.

Here's a fairly typical example of my watermark on an image shot for sale purposes:



Here's a "signature" I use with images I'm not really trying to sell:



I may scale the "signature" up and down depending upon usage and final size of the image, and will make it more or less transparent and/or change the color depending upon the image. But often it's simply added to images using essentially the same process as the watermarks.

To add either a the watermark or the signature, I use Lightroom most of the time now. For more finished images, intended for printing, I use Photoshop to add the signature. In the past I've used FastStone Photo Resizer, which can be used to both size images and add a watermark to them (among other things) - rapidly and in batches. FastStone is free. Lightroom isn't, but does a better job because it can automatically scale a watermark to fit the image, while FastStone can't. In the case of FastStone, watermarks or signatures always need to be created first in another program, such as Photoshop (save it as a .png if you want it to be transparent). That's generally the best with Lightroom, too, though it's possible to create very simple text watermarks with LR alone.

The only images I ever send out without any watermark or signature are those purchased for commercial or editorial usage.

All images I display digitally or provide to customers in a digital format also have copyright info and protections embedded in the image's EXIF metadata (never "save for the web" in any program... that usually removes most or all the EXIF). Removing this without my permission also can be penalized up to $30,000 per instance (in addition to any other awards for copyright infringement).