How To Publish & Promote Your Photos

Recently we spoke about where you can and should post your photos and today we’re going to teach you how to do it correctly. One useful advice: take care of your reputation and never post failed photos. It may be difficult to remember your beautiful pictures, if they are surrounded by a dozen of unsuccessful ones. That is why you should honestly evaluate your work and hide the worst images from everybody.

First of all, think about protection of your photos from the unauthorized use. Following recommendations will help you to avoid copyright infringement:

• Never publish your photos in their original resolution. There are two reasons not to do so. The first – original versions usually have great sizes (more than 6MB) and it takes a long time to upload them on a website. And the second – it seems that you give your property to pirates “on a silver platter”. Infringers themselves may easily crop your image to the desired size, while increasing the image resolution is much more difficult.
• Add the copyright sign in EXIF/IPTC. If you are using an advanced camera, it can be done right in its menu. If it is not possible then add the copyright sign in a photo editor while adjusting your image.
• If you want to post photos on social networks, publish only small images. Popular services like Facebook, Twitter or Instagram get rights to your posted photos and may delegate these rights to third parties.
• Put a watermark to your image. This is the easiest and the most effective way to protect the image. For this purpose, you may use our software Visual Watermark. With the help of this application you can protect your pictures and make them better looking using different effects.

Optimal picture sizes of the most popular websites

A picture must have an optimal size in order to be displayed correctly on the web. But there is one problem. Different sites have their particular requirements. If you do not want your images to lose their quality, you need to know the maximum size that is allowed on the most common websites.

• Facebook allows to post pictures with maximum size of 2048 x 2048 pixels.
• Google Plus. If you store pictures here for free, than their long side cannot exceed 2048 pixels. Actually, if you signed in Google Plus your photos would be reduced automatically to the optimal size.
• Flickr. You can post your photos in their original resolution on this network. Flickr sets no limit on pixels, but the maximum picture size is 20MB.
• SmugMug. This service also sets the limit on the image size, but it is much more loyal (200MB).
• The developers of 500px promise that soon the limit set on their website will be increased. Currently the long side of images on 500px cannot exceed 900 pixels.

Overall, the optimal size of posting photos practically on all websites is about 900 pixels. Images with this size are uploaded quickly and preserve the original quality. Our advice is to add some sharpness before you save the resized image. If you ignore this tip, your image will likely be blurred. And do not forget that if you have a blog, it is better to post photos here, and publish only small announcements with links on social networks.

Social networks like Facebook, Twitter or Instagram help you to share your nice pieces of work with friends and launch your promotion campaign. When you are ready enough for big success, you may move your photos to Flickr and get ranks or advice from professional photographers. Any Flickr user can promote his/her unique photo in its full resolution. Get inspired by talented works of sophisticated photographers and create your own fan club. The more followers you have the more famous you become. And maybe one day your pictures will be known all over the world.