How do I protect my art online?

Combine a visible mark or credit, copyright metadata, a modest file size, registration in the US, and AI opt-out signals. None of them stops copying on its own, and each does a different job.

Do I need to register my art to own the copyright?

No. In the US, copyright exists once an original work is fixed (17 U.S.C. 102(a)). Registration governs suing over a US work (17 U.S.C. 411(a)) and statutory damages and attorney's fees (17 U.S.C. 412).

Should I watermark my art?

It is your choice. Our advice is to use a notice or a signature that fits the piece, and to place it where a crop would not cut it.

Does copyright metadata protect my art?

It names you inside the file, and some services read it, but a service may not show it. In IPTC's Spring 2019 test, Instagram displayed no embedded metadata.

Can I stop AI training on my art?

You can send published signals such as robots.txt tokens and the IPTC Data Mining property. Outside the EU rule, honouring them is voluntary.

How to protect your art online

Use several layers and know each one's limit. A visible mark and copyright metadata name you; a smaller file gives copiers less to use; in the US, registration (17 U.S.C. 411 and 412) governs suing over a US work and statutory damages; AI opt-out signals are requests. None of them is a lock.

Published October 30, 2026. Drafted with AI assistance and checked against the sources linked on this page. How we write our guides.

How to protect your art online: five layers and what each does

In the US, copyright in an original piece of art exists once it is fixed. Under 17 U.S.C. 102(a), copyright subsists in original works of authorship fixed in any tangible medium of expression, and section 102(a)(5) lists "pictorial, graphic, and sculptural works" among them. Nothing below creates that right. The layers help you get credit, make copying less useful, and prepare you to act if someone copies your work. Everything on this page is about the US unless it says otherwise.

The five layers and their limits
Layer	What it does	What it does not do
A visible mark	Puts your name or notice on the picture itself.	It does not create copyright or replace registration.
Metadata and Content Credentials	Writes your name and rights into the file.	A service may not show it, and nobody has to read it.
Smaller files	Gives a copier less resolution to use.	A copy at screen size can still be reposted.
Registration in the US	Governs suing over a US work (17 U.S.C. 411(a)) and statutory damages (17 U.S.C. 412).	It does not prevent copying.
AI opt-out signals	Say, in published ways, that you do not want your images used for training.	Honouring them is voluntary outside the EU rule.

Whether a mark protects anything in law is covered in our guide on whether a watermark protects your photos, and whether you should use one in whether to watermark your photos. This page does not repeat them; it puts the five layers side by side.

Watermark ideas for art: where and how

Three ideas, all our advice rather than rules:

A notice. In the US, 17 U.S.C. 401(b) says a notice on copies consists of three elements: the symbol © (or the word "Copyright", or "Copr."), the year of first publication, and the owner's name. Typing "(c)" is not on that list, so use the real symbol. For an unpublished work, the Copyright Office's Circular 1 gives the year of creation.
A name or handle. Shorter than a notice, and it leaves the art more visible. It is a credit, not a notice under section 401(b).
A signature. Painters already sign their work, and a signature that looks like part of the piece fits art better than a typed line. Our guide to signature watermarks covers it.

We suggest placing the mark over a detailed area rather than in a blank corner, since a plain corner is the easiest part to crop. Our guide to where to put a watermark has crop data for common positions. If you paint in Procreate, our Procreate watermark guide covers making a mark on its own layer.

In the Fix Watermark photo tool in a desktop or phone browser (steps checked October 2026):

Open the photo watermark tool and add a photo or scan of your artwork saved as an image.
In Watermark text, type your notice, for example "© 2026 Your Name".
Drag the watermark in the preview to place it, or press the arrow keys.
Set Opacity (%) until the mark can be read and the art still shows.
Select Download.

The tool runs in your browser, so your artwork is not uploaded. Free: up to 50 photos per run, and runs are unlimited. No watermark of ours on your photos, ever. Original pixel size; JPEG and WebP are re-encoded at the quality you choose. Tick Repeat as a pattern if you want the mark across the whole picture.

Copyright metadata and Content Credentials for your art

A visible mark can be cropped; information inside the file stays out of sight. Our copyright metadata tool writes Creator, Copyright notice, Credit line, Web statement of rights and Licensor URL into a JPEG, PNG or WebP file without touching the pixels. Free, no limit. Your pixels are not touched; only the metadata changes. JPEG files receive EXIF, IPTC and XMP; PNG and WebP files receive EXIF and XMP.

Some services read these fields. Google's documentation on image metadata (read October 30, 2026) recommends keeping the IPTC creator, credit line and copyright notice fields for attribution, and says it does not promise that IPTC metadata will show up in search results. Other services may not show the data: in IPTC's Spring 2019 test of sharing sites, the Instagram result reads "No embedded metadata displayed". Instagram offered no save or download in that test, so it shows what Instagram displayed, not what it stored. Treat metadata as a complement to a visible mark.

Content Credentials go further. The Coalition for Content Provenance and Authenticity (C2PA) says on its home page that they "function like a nutrition label for digital content", and its FAQ describes them as tamper-evident, cryptographically signed data structures that travel with the asset. The FAQ also says they are not a form of DRM. Adobe's pages describe how to attach them on export: Photoshop offers JPG or PNG with "Publish to Content Credentials cloud", "Attach to file" or "None", and notes that attached credentials can be stripped when published online. Lightroom Classic supports all file formats except PSD and PSB. Our tools do not write Content Credentials.

Post smaller files to protect your artwork online

Etsy's page on protecting listing images (read October 30, 2026) suggests images around 1500 pixels wide, because that is large enough to view without blurring yet too small to save as a larger, higher quality file. Etsy writes that about its own listings. Our reading is that the idea carries over to a portfolio or a social post: show the size people need to view the work, and keep the full-resolution file to yourself. Etsy's page adds that if you sell 2D prints or original artwork, you can use photos of the actual print or work instead of the digital file.

A small file is not a lock, since a screen-size copy can still be reposted, and our photo tool keeps the original pixel size, so export at the size you want before adding a mark.

Register your artwork with the US Copyright Office

Registration does a different job from everything above. In the US, under 17 U.S.C. 411(a), no civil action for infringement of the copyright in a United States work may be instituted until preregistration or registration has been made, apart from actions under section 106A(a). The Office's Circular 1 adds that for a US work, registration (or refusal) is necessary to enforce the exclusive rights through litigation. Under 17 U.S.C. 412, statutory damages and attorney's fees generally depend on registration before the infringement began, or within three months after first publication; the section opens with exceptions. As of October 2026, 17 U.S.C. 504(c) lets an owner elect statutory damages, per work, of $750 to $30,000, and the court may increase that to $150,000 for willful infringement.

The process for a single work, per the Office's Circular 2, is to complete the online application, pay the fee, and upload an electronic deposit copy or send a physical one. Start at the Office's registration page.

Fees, as of October 2026: 37 CFR 201.3(c) sets $45 for the Single Application (one work, not made for hire, one author who is also the claimant) and $65 for all other filings under the Standard Application (the Office's fee page lists the same amounts).
A change is pending. The Office's proposed fee schedule, submitted to Congress on July 14, 2026, would raise those two filings to $55 and $85, and the Register's letter in it says the Office seeks to implement the new fees in the fall of 2026. The Office's fee study page says Congress has 120 days to respond with legislation disapproving the proposal, and 17 U.S.C. 708(b) allows the fees after 120 days unless Congress enacts a law disapproving them. By our count that period ends November 11, 2026. Check the fee page before you pay.
Timing, as of October 2026: the Office's processing times page gives an average of 4.1 months for all claims closed from April 1 to September 30, 2026. Circular 1 says the effective date of registration is the day the Office receives all required elements in proper form, not the day it finishes examining. We suggest filing early, since section 412 turns on registration dates.
It is public. The Office's FAQ says the information you provide on your registration is available to the public and will be available on the Internet.

Circular 1 says registering a work is not mandatory. Registering does not stop anyone from copying; it governs what you can do afterwards. If your art is photographs, our guide to registering photos covers the group option for photographs.

AI opt-out signals for your art

There are published ways to say that you do not want images used to train AI models, and each one is a request. A robots.txt token such as GPTBot, ClaudeBot or Google-Extended is documented by each operator on its own page, and a robots.txt file belongs to a website, so in our reading it speaks only for your own site. The IPTC Photo Metadata Standard has a Data Mining property for a prohibition or permission inside the file; our copyright metadata tool does not write it. In the EU, the text and data mining exception in Article 4(3) of Directive (EU) 2019/790 applies where the use has not been expressly reserved by the rightholder in an appropriate manner, such as machine-readable means for content made publicly available online; the directive does not say which signal qualifies. Outside that EU rule, honouring any of these is voluntary. The details, with each operator's wording, are in our guide on how to stop AI training on your images.

What none of this does

A visible mark can be cropped, a service may not show your metadata, a smaller file can be reposted, registration does not prevent copying, and opt-out signals can be ignored. The layers add up because they do different jobs: credit, context, less to copy, a basis for acting in the US, and a stated preference about training. We suggest choosing the ones that fit how you share your work, and starting with registration if you expect to want to act on a copy. Nothing on this page tells you what to do in a particular dispute.

This is general information, not legal advice.

Sources

Checked October 30, 2026.

Questions

How do I protect my art online?: Combine a visible mark or credit, copyright metadata, a modest file size, registration in the US, and AI opt-out signals. None of them stops copying on its own, and each does a different job.
Do I need to register my art to own the copyright?: No. In the US, copyright exists once an original work is fixed (17 U.S.C. 102(a)). Registration governs suing over a US work (17 U.S.C. 411(a)) and statutory damages and attorney's fees (17 U.S.C. 412).
Should I watermark my art?: It is your choice. Our advice is to use a notice or a signature that fits the piece, and to place it where a crop would not cut it.
Does copyright metadata protect my art?: It names you inside the file, and some services read it, but a service may not show it. In IPTC's Spring 2019 test, Instagram displayed no embedded metadata.
Can I stop AI training on my art?: You can send published signals such as robots.txt tokens and the IPTC Data Mining property. Outside the EU rule, honouring them is voluntary.