Walgreens Photo Release: Fill & Download for Free

There are many ways to protect digital imagery. None of those ways will protect against screen capture. Generally a screen capture is not going to be a high enough quality for a re-sellable photo. If you are really worried, you can leave a watermark in the image. This can be as obvious or as subtle as you like. \At the end of the day only you will have the original quality image that should be less compressed than anything you publish so that you have proof of your copyright. If you are concerned of those being stolen, you can apply a non-visible digital watermark inside the files. Any theft for profit will have to be pursued legally, and by hand. There is no magic image protection.If you are showing proofs before you sell to consumers on facebook ALWAYS cover the entire image with a watermark that they cannot easily paint away in photoshop, they will steal it and print/post/share it in whatever terrible quality they manage to grab. (As a photographer, this is a nightmare because I always want my work to be shared in the highest possible quality) As a Walgreens photo specialist I would not sell watermarked prints without a release, but many of my co-workers would, and many customers just stormed away angrily with: “There is no way I am paying that photographer what he wants for more prints, I will just go print them at Walmart, they don’t care there!!!!” With those clients in mind, I usually cover the whole image with a watermark that they would not be able to live with in their photo album. It sounds kind-of harsh, but you won’t make a living in photography any other way. Who am I kidding, I still don’t make a living in photography alone!

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When working at Walgreens in the photo department on a busy day a customer came in to pick up an order of prints that contained a few personal photos at the front and back of a huge stack of clearly copyrighted Disney and similar characters downloaded from a Google image search, horribly pixelated and stretched.I informed the customer I would not be able to sell her most of the order as it consisted largely of copyrighted images and our store policy requires a release for such images - it’s unlikely Disney, Nickelodeon, etc would release the order and it’d be a lot of work for such a poor result.We had large signs stating our policy, and the website requires you to agree that you are submitting photos you have the right to reproduce, so this shouldn’t have been news to the customer.Instead of being a reasonable person she decides to become abusive and attempt to belittle me and my store. She says that Walmart lets her print anything she wants and she’s never been treated so poorly, and she’ll never come back to Walgreens if I don’t sell the order and demands to speak to a manager.I tell her something along the lines of:I’m glad you won’t be back, as we need less customers like you, and if Walmart is OK with taking on the liability of printing and selling copyrighted photos that is on them. I am not OK with such liability. You may speak with a manager if you wish but they will tell you the same thing.She decided just to leave in a dramatic huffy fashion. I never saw her again, though I do think she called to complain or bumped into a manager on the way out; as my manager visited with me about the event later.He asked for my version of the story first and was generally supportive. He was surprised I’d snapped at a customer like that, and recommended I let a manager know next time if a customer is being difficult but was OK with the outcome as I hadn’t sold the problematic order.