Looking for advice on how to deal with a customer who "Screen-Captured" hundreds of photos from the gallery instead of purchasing those images from me where they cropped my logo out.
Has anyone had this happen to them? I am not sure how to handle this and am looking for advise.
Thank you kindly,
Cindy Meyer
Yellow Dog Studio
+3
Hi Cindy,
I’m so sorry this has happened! I completely understand and relate to this situation. Firstly, can I ask where your logo was positioned on the images? And how large/small was the logo? I know it doesn’t help - but a screenshot will not give them an image suitable for great print images.
Do you have anything in your contract or communication with your client regarding taking screenshots of images? How did you realise that they have been doing this?
You have the option of either a) addressing this with the client directly and sending them an invoice for the images they have in effect, stolen, b) let them know you’re aware that they’ve screenshot the images and that you’d like to ensure they have images suitable for printing once they’ve paid the invoice, or C) let it go and make sure to have processes in place so that this can’t happen again.
Some photographers make their logo HUGE across the centre of the image, which will deter clients from stealing the images but can also reduce sales as they can’t SEE the images clearly. I like using a thin grid watermark or a diagonal low opacity watermark across the images so that it makes cropping it out impossible.
If you don’t mind, I’m going to pin this question to the featured section so hopefully some other photographers can also comment and give suggestions to you on how best to handle this going forward!
- Edel
So sorry this happened. I use a white logo across the centre so they can still see the image but if they screen shot it they can’t just crop it off.
Erica
Thank you for the responses, it is appreciated. Guess I am just shocked by it. All of the suggestions make sense to me and my contract is correctly stated. Yes please share with others. I’ve always been a person who prefers to compensate people for their work and I for one probably over compensate! This situation just caught me off guard.
Thank you again it is appreciated!
Cindy Meyer
Yellow Dog Studio
Hi Cindy
So sorry this has happened to you. I used to get this with some of the images I put on facebook, I now make facebook images low res and just treat it more for my own marketing purposes, using already purchased images when possible. With Shootproof I use their standard watermark which puts my business name across the centre of the image, it can still be screen shot but my name will always be across their face!!
Kind regards
Jo
Jo Buckley Photography
+3
Some good feedback and advice here for sure! Another one that was mentioned over in our Cole’s Classroom community was to use a grid overlay - LSP actions currently offer this on their site as one of the “12 days of Christmas” freebies (so worth checking that out if you haven’t already!)
- Edel
+3
Oh no! That is awful. I’m sorry that happened. It is so upsetting when someone takes advantage like that. I use a really translucent watermark over the entire image in my galleries, I try to make it just barely visible so that it doesn’t detract too much from the image and clients can still view and enjoy there for ordering proposes, but also doesn’t really allow it to be printed or shared.
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