How to add copyright to photos, in one line: write the notice into the file's metadata, in all three places software looks for it: IPTC Copyright Notice (dataset 2:116), EXIF Copyright (tag 0x8298) and XMP dc:rights. Add your name as Creator, and if you license images, a Web Statement of Rights URL and a Licensor URL. One ExifTool command does all of it, shown below. None of this stops anyone from copying the picture. It keeps your name and terms attached wherever the file travels intact, and it's what Google Images reads to show the Licensable badge.
The fields that carry rights
| IPTC name | IIM dataset | EXIF tag | XMP property |
|---|---|---|---|
| Copyright Notice | 2:116 CopyrightNotice | Copyright 0x8298 | dc:rights |
| Creator | 2:80 By-line | Artist 0x013B | dc:creator |
| Credit Line | 2:110 Credit | none | photoshop:Credit |
| Web Statement of Rights | none | none | xmpRights:WebStatement |
| Licensor URL | none | none | plus:LicensorURL |
| Copyright Status | none | none | xmpRights:Marked |
Copyright Notice names the owner: © 2026 Jane Doe. All rights reserved. is the usual form. Creator is the person who made the image, which isn't always the owner. A staff photographer's employer may own the rights. Credit Line is how a publisher should print the credit, for example Jane Doe for Example Agency.
The last three exist only in XMP. Web Statement of Rights is a URL to the license terms. Licensor URL comes from the PLUS schema and points to a page where someone can license the image or contact you; in the file it sits inside a Licensor structure, not directly on the image. Copyright Status is a boolean that Photoshop and Lightroom show as Copyrighted when it's True.
What Google Images reads
Google's image metadata documentation lists the IPTC fields it extracts: Copyright Notice, Creator, Credit Line, Digital Source Type, Licensor URL and Web Statement of Rights. Two of them drive the Licensable badge:
- Web Statement of Rights is required for the badge when you rely on embedded metadata. It's the link to your license.
- Licensor URL is recommended. It becomes the "how to license this image" link.
You can give Google the same information with schema.org structured data instead (license and acquireLicensePage). When the page markup and the embedded IPTC disagree, Google uses the structured data. Google also says plainly that it doesn't guarantee the badge will show.
Embedded metadata has one practical advantage: you write it once per image, and it follows the file to every page that uses it. Check that your own site doesn't strip it when it generates resized versions, since the copy Google crawls is the one your page serves.
How to add copyright to photos with the online editor
- Open the metadata editor and drop a JPEG or TIFF.
- Choose Edit EXIF Metadata, then expand EXIF General. Under EXIF Author, type
Jane Doein Creator (EXIF Artist) and© 2026 Jane Doe. All rights reserved.in Copyright Notice (EXIF Copyright). - Expand IPTC & XMP Rights and fill in the same notice and name. Each of those fields writes the IPTC and the XMP copy at once, so Copyright Notice there sets both IPTC CopyrightNotice and dc:rights.
- In the same panel, add Credit Line, Web Statement of Rights and Licensor URL if you license images. Digital Source Type is a dropdown; pick "Original digital capture sampled from real life" for a camera photo.
- Click Edit Metadata, then Download.
Text fields reject @ , : ; # & + % ! | * ", which is why the example has no comma after the year. Copyright 2026, Jane Doe will be refused; © 2026 Jane Doe won't. Creator is limited to 32 characters and Copyright Notice to 128, matching the IPTC limits for By-line and CopyrightNotice. The two URL fields only accept a full address starting with https:// or http://.
What the form can't do: Copyright Status (xmpRights:Marked), several creators in a list, and anything on PNG or WebP. Use ExifTool for those. If the EXIF fields are already set on a batch of files, this copies them into IPTC and XMP without retyping:
$ exiftool -overwrite_original -codedcharacterset=utf8 -tagsFromFile @ "-IPTC:By-line<EXIF:Artist" "-XMP-dc:Creator<EXIF:Artist" "-IPTC:CopyrightNotice<EXIF:Copyright" "-XMP-dc:Rights<EXIF:Copyright" photo.jpg
1 image files updated
$ exiftool -G1 -a -s -Artist -By-line -Creator -Copyright -CopyrightNotice -Rights photo.jpg
[IFD0] Artist : Jane Doe
[IPTC] By-line : Jane Doe
[XMP-dc] Creator : Jane Doe
[IFD0] Copyright : © 2026 Jane Doe. All rights reserved.
[IPTC] CopyrightNotice : © 2026 Jane Doe. All rights reserved.
[XMP-dc] Rights : © 2026 Jane Doe. All rights reserved.The full ExifTool command
This writes every field from the table in one pass. Tested on ExifTool 12.76:
exiftool -overwrite_original -codedcharacterset=utf8 \
-EXIF:Artist="Jane Doe" -IPTC:By-line="Jane Doe" -XMP-dc:Creator="Jane Doe" \
-EXIF:Copyright="© 2026 Jane Doe. All rights reserved." \
-IPTC:CopyrightNotice="© 2026 Jane Doe. All rights reserved." \
-XMP-dc:Rights="© 2026 Jane Doe. All rights reserved." \
-IPTC:Credit="Jane Doe Photography" -XMP-photoshop:Credit="Jane Doe Photography" \
-XMP-xmpRights:WebStatement="https://janedoe.example/license" \
-XMP-plus:LicensorURL="https://janedoe.example/licensing" \
-XMP-xmpRights:Marked=True \
photo.jpg$ exiftool -G1 -a -s -Copyright -CopyrightNotice -Rights -Artist -By-line -Creator -Credit -WebStatement -LicensorURL -Marked photo.jpg
[IFD0] Copyright : © 2026 Jane Doe. All rights reserved.
[IPTC] CopyrightNotice : © 2026 Jane Doe. All rights reserved.
[XMP-dc] Rights : © 2026 Jane Doe. All rights reserved.
[IFD0] Artist : Jane Doe
[IPTC] By-line : Jane Doe
[XMP-dc] Creator : Jane Doe
[IPTC] Credit : Jane Doe Photography
[XMP-photoshop] Credit : Jane Doe Photography
[XMP-xmpRights] WebStatement : https://janedoe.example/license
[XMP-plus] LicensorURL : https://janedoe.example/licensing
[XMP-xmpRights] Marked : TrueExifTool builds the Licensor structure for you: in the XMP packet the URL lands at plus:Licensor/rdf:Seq/rdf:li/plus:LicensorURL, which is the shape Google asks for. -codedcharacterset=utf8 marks the IPTC strings as UTF-8 so the © reads correctly elsewhere.
The © in EXIF is a weaker spot. EXIF Copyright is an ASCII field, and ExifTool stores the symbol as the UTF-8 bytes C2 A9. ExifTool reads it back fine; Pillow 10.2 returned © 2026 Jane Doe. All rights reserved. for the same file. If old EXIF readers matter to you, put Copyright 2026 Jane Doe in the EXIF field and keep the © for IPTC and XMP.
Watermark or metadata
They solve different problems. Metadata is invisible and costs the image nothing, but most social networks strip it on upload, a screenshot drops it, and plenty of export and resizing pipelines lose it (see does social media remove metadata). Its job is attribution for files that travel intact: deliveries to clients, agencies, stock libraries, and images Google crawls on your own site.
A visible watermark survives re-encoding and screenshots. It also gets cropped, cloned out or painted over, and it spoils the photo for the people you want to see it. A reasonable split is watermarks on public previews and clean, fully tagged files for paying clients.
Removing copyright metadata and the DMCA
In the United States, 17 U.S.C. section 1202(b) prohibits intentionally removing or altering copyright management information without the owner's authority, when the person knows, or has reasonable grounds to know, that it will induce, enable, facilitate or conceal infringement. Section 1202(c) defines that information to include the author's name, the copyright owner, the notice itself, terms and conditions for use, and identifying numbers or links pointing to them. That reads very close to the field list above. Section 1203 sets statutory damages at $2,500 to $25,000 per violation. The EU has a comparable rule in Article 7 of Directive 2001/29/EC.
Two practical consequences, and this is not legal advice. Stripping metadata from your own photos is your business. Stripping someone else's rights fields before republishing their image is exactly what those provisions target, and whether a given case meets the knowledge requirement is a question for a lawyer, not a metadata tool. Google's own advice for site owners is to keep at least Creator, Credit Line and Copyright Notice when optimizing images.
Check the result
Open the file in the EXIF reader. Copyright Notice can appear three times, once each for EXIF, IPTC and XMP, because all three share the label; Creator also appears up to three times, and Credit Line twice. Web Statement of Rights and Licensor URL appear once. A field missing from the list was not written. To see which block each value sits in, use the ExifTool check from the previous section: the group name in brackets tells you.