In this tutorial video I’ll show you how to create and apply a copyright metadata preset that you can apply to your photos upon import or to any selected photos in the Library module.
I want to point out that this is a metadata preset which means your copyright will be in the file properties data and they will not be printed on the front of your photos. If you want to have your copyright appear on top your photo, you need to create a watermark, which I’ll show you how to do in another video. Adding a copyright preset is really easy, so watch this video to learn how to create your own.
Setting Up a Metadata Preset to Copyright Your Images
To create your copyright preset, go to your import dialog and go to the Meta data section under the Apply During Import Panel. Click on New and a preset dialog will pop up. At the top you can give your preset a name. I will call this Copyright 2016. There are a lot of fields here but you can ignore most of them and head down to the IPTC Copyright section. To create a copyright symbol if you are on a Mac hit Opt G, if you are on a PC you can either just put parentheses around the letter “c” (c) which I think looks fine, or if you have a side keypad hold down the Alt key and type 0169 to get the copyright symbol. I’m going to include the year and my name and on the next line change the status to copyrighted and under copyright Usage terms I use All Rights Reserved but what you put there may depend on your legal needs. You can also fill in other boxes to fit your situation such as rights usage terms.
Then go down to the IPTC Creator section and put your name and you can also put your email if you want to include contact info for people to be able to reach you if they want to ask about a photo, but that is up to you. You can fill in other fields if you want. I’m going to leave it with just my name and email and then click Create. Now in the Apply During Import panel you will see your new copyright appear beside Metadata. As long as I have this preset selected it will automatically be applied as your photos are imported.
If you want to edit your preset, instead of choosing New, select Edit and then the preset you want to edit. So now I can go in here and edit it if I want. You could also delete it or rename it. I won’t do that now I just wanted to show you how you could do it. By the way, it’s generally recommended that you include the year in your copyright and it’s a good idea to keep at least a few of prior year’s copyrights in case you run across photos you forgot to copyright.
What if you have a bunch of photos that you already imported, and now you want to add a copyright to them? No problem. From the Library module just open the Meta data panel and choose IPTC from the dropdown. Then select the photos you want to copyright –this is easiest when you are in the Grid view. Now at the top under preset, choose your copyright. You will get a dialog box asking if you want to apply the copyright to the “active selected” image or all of the selected photos. The active image is the one that has the lightest colored gray around it. I will choose All Selected and the copyright will be applied. Now I will select a photo and scroll down to the Copyright Status and we can see that it shows the copyright.
In my next video I will show you how to create a watermark to be added to your photos as you export them.