Hello!
Today I want to pass on a very valuable tool for anyone who designs their own products or for photographers. Know your IP rights! I was lucky enough to be shown this by one of my business friends and it's amazing!
Apologies for those of you who already know this, you are obviously already very fabulous and don't need my advice. But for those of you who haven't heard of it - and I know there's a few of you out there - here you go...........
You can search Google (on a pc, not sure how this works on a Mac) using a picture or photograph rather than a typed word!!!!! I can hear you gasp already, yes it is #amazeballs, and what's fab about it, is it's SO easy to do! So, if you're not already bowled over by this let me tell you how this has helped me.Firstly - and most importantly - it has enabled me to find a few scoundrels who have decided to use my design as their own, without my permission of course!!! The first time, I found a 'new' wedding company (apparently they are the "UK's No.1 Bespoke Wedding Site"!) had taken one of my images of my bride & groom design and were using it on their facebook page! Thankfully facebook were great and could see without any doubt that the image belonged to me and removed it from their site! The most recent incident involves a company who have actually taken my bride & groom design and are selling it as one of their own designs!!!
Secondly by searching some of my most popular designs I have discovered that my products have been blogged about without me even knowing! This is great to be able to add to my collection of where my designs have been published.
This (I hope) will show you how to use this brilliant part of Google:
Step 1 - go to Google: www.google.co.uk and select 'images' from the top bar.
Step 2 - on the right hand side of the search box there is a small camera icon. Click on the camera.
Step 3 - a box will appear like this. Next you need to click "Upload an image".
Step 4 - next click on "Choose file" and this will enable you to select the file from your computer or desktop. (There are 2 other ways to search too, which I will show you at the end)
Step 5 - so now you've selected your file, just wait a second or two while your file uploads.....
Step 6 - and that's it! It will show you all the pages/ images where it has found your image! So you can go through each and see if you recognise the website's - if not investigate!
The other 2 methods of searching for images are by pasting an image URL or by dragging an image to the right of the box:
Let me know what you think!
Hope it helps a few people.
If you need a bit more info Google have a short YouTube video: http://www.google.com/insidesearch/features/images/searchbyimage.html
Love Kate x
