How do you protect yourself against art theft? Examples of watermarks helpful!

[9outofPen]

I recently made an Instagram and would like to be more active on social media for my comics and original artwork. But my friend mentioned that while Instagram has great exposure, art theft is also rampant on there. So now I'm worrying too much over how to protect my stuff. What do you do to keep peace of mind when posting your artwork on social media?

I have a watermark that I use sometimes, but can you look at this example image? Is this enough? Is there a better place to put my watermark? I'm not a fan of plastering it over the whole image and lowering opacity.

[joannekwan]

In Instagram's case, I always just post cropped versions of images or pictures of the image taken with my phone and I try to post the lowest quality possible. If people want to see the full piece, they'll have to go to my tumblr.

As for watermarks in general, I got into the habit a couple years ago to write my url out on my works and have parts of it straddling the art and the background so it would be more of a chore to photoshop out. I also sign my work in the same way.

[zigmenthotep]

My take on it: the only way to fully protect your work is never to post it.
I put a small unobtrusive mark on my works.

But here's the thing of it, that's not to protect the work, it's to tell people where they can find more of my work. Most people who take your work and repost it are going to do so watermark or not (unless you use a huge one that covers the image, effectively making the work not worth stealing). And anyone more malicious than that is probably going to have the resources to remove any reasonable watermarks.

[moertel]

I like how e.g. Cassandra Calin does it. Similar to what @joannekwan does, the signature is part of the image but always very decent and subtle. See for example this or this.

Not intrusive and very effective for those interested in the art and the author. Just make sure you turn up in the results when someone types your name or alias into a search engine. You can't prevent people from stealing it but I guess the key is to prevent people from being able to easily screenshot your image without your signature. @zigmenthotep's example would be easy to cut off at the bottom to exclude the name.

My recommendation would be to add your Instagram name as a signature to the images.

[zigmenthotep]

Meh, I'd rather have people steal my work than be so paranoid that I make my work not worth stealing.

[scythe]

All of my comic art has a speckle filter over the top. That's not for everyone, but I actually like the way it gives my art some extra texture, which is hard to achieve in lots of digital art. Anyway, I think it's a pretty effective measure against people stealing art to reprint or resell.

[moertel]

[...] make my work not worth stealing.

That's where we disagree, I guess. There are enough examples of people whose art got stolen, reposted, went viral and was made money off without their knowledge. It hurts especially freelancers who need the exposure but also need the commissions to pay their rent. If it doesn't hurt you, personally or professionally, no need to add watermarks or signatures. Doesn't seem like that's an option for the OP, though.