With the increasing sales of NFTs to easy account creations, digital artists are at risk of people (AKA jerks) stealing their work like never before. In fact, DeviantArt reported 11,000 stolen artworks on Open Sea between July and September of last year alone. 

While art theft has commonly been big business, nowadays it’s becoming easy for almost anyone, even unknowingly. That’s why protecting your work is more important than ever. Here is how to secure digital art. 

Add a Watermark to Your Work

Watermarks come in all shapes and sizes, but traditionally, they take the form of a visible logo or piece of text superimposed onto an image. Perhaps you want a more obvious watermark—in that case, you may opt for one large semi-transparent logo in the center of your artwork. 

Pro tip: For increased protection, consider tiling your watermark, which distributes the marks multiple times across the entire image, making it that much more difficult to remove.

When selling your artwork online, it’s important not to make your watermark exclusive to one platform, especially if you’re planning to use it on others. For example, if you’re selling art on both Gumroad and Cubebrush, but use a Gumroad watermark on Cubebrush too, they likely won’t share your work and help to promote it. 

Being platform-specific also ensures that your product communicates authenticity so that customers know your artwork is legitimate.

Shrink Wrap It

Shrinkwrapping an image entails placing a transparent layer over the original. That way, if an infringer attempts to download it, they will end up downloading the clear file instead of the actual version. 

Unlike a watermark, a shrink wrap is completely transparent, so doing so will not have an impact on the image online. The only way someone will know it’s shrink-wrapped is if they try to download it without permission.

Disable the Right-Click

Unfortunately, stealing online art is a simple matter of downloading it and reuploading elsewhere. Disabling right-click on your image, however, prevents it from being downloaded altogether. 

Though more advanced fraudsters are unlikely to use this method, disabling the right-click is a proactive measure that can be taken to ensure that even those who may not have bad intentions are also unable to download it. 

Although the extent of prevention can be limited, as infringers can still screenshot, it still clearly conveys to general users that the artist does not want their image downloaded.

Add Invisible Information to Your Images

Another solution that doesn’t affect the look of the image is to create an invisible watermark. This method is not viewable to the infringer or general user, but can help prove you are the owner if copyright infringement occurs. This method is a bit more clandestine than others and can catch digital thieves in their tracks without them suspecting a thing. There are multiple software platforms you can use to create encrypted watermarks and detect them as well such as, like SignMyImage and Icemark. A huge advantage is that invisible watermarks can withstand various image editing techniques like compression, distortion, cropping, etc. 

In addition to hiding a watermark, you can also use steganography, which embeds a hidden text file into an image that can later be revealed with a specific password. Although this is effective as well, if the image is edited in any way, you will no longer be able to detect it.

Only Provide Low-Resolution Images

One of the benefits of selling online is that you as the buyer can advertise a lower resolution copy of your product rather than the real thing. You can then explain in the description that high-res images will be provided once purchased. This makes it virtually impossible for fraudsters to steal your content with just a click of a button.

Of course, there’s a fine balance here. Be sure that the image is high enough quality that attracts customers, but not high enough to be stolen and sold elsewhere. We recommend a happy medium—no more than 72dpi.

Use the Right Platform

Security is a growing issue amongst artists online, and sadly, not all techniques are 100% effective. That’s why it’s important to partner up with a platform that not only takes additional security measures but is also easy to contact in case an infringement issue arises. 

A readily available team can make or break your experience with selling digital art. Rather than waiting in a queue for help when you have an urgent copyright situation, Cubebrush’s help center is available around the clock to make sure that all your hard work is paying off. 

Cubebrush provides the ultimate boutique experience of any digital art shop out there— although we have nearly one million subscribers and 10k sellers, customer support will make you feel like you’re the only one. 

Bolster your protection against digital art theft with Cubebrush.