red oak road: Pinterest Precautions - Watermarks, Opt-Out Code, Buttons :)

Last week, Susan and I asked readers how they felt about Pinterest.

The majority feel that Pinterest is a great source of traffic to their blogs.

But some were concerned about photos of their children being used for other purposes.

I went through a phase where I water-marked photos of my kids, but then I got a little lazy, I do see where water-marking is distracting from the photo, etc.

BUT ~ if you are really concerned with having your kids photos end up used on different materials, etc.

watermarking is a fairly simple prevention method.

Picasa Free Photo Editing Software is one of my favorite ways to add text to a picture. It is SO easy!

For those of you who don't know, Picasa is Google's FREE photo editing software. I talked about installing Picasa here. Easy Peasy.

To add a watermark in Picasa, just click on the photo (you may need to make a copy if it's not saved in Picasa yet). From the main editing box, click on Text. Type in your blog name. You may want to add something like Blog Name ~ Do Not Copy.

You can adjust the size of text to what looks best by pulling on the little textbox--love this feature!

Once you have your text where you want, move that Transparency bar to left until your text is as transparent as you want. You can still readjust size if you need to :)

Let's say you want to use Photoshop (not free). Open your image, click text, position your text box where you want it.

Type in your blog name and maybe ~do not copy

Head on over to the right side of your screen and move the Opacity slider until your text is as Opaque as you want it ;-)

Let's say maybe you want free software but don't want to download it to your machine, you can use Photobucket. Upload your photo to your free account.

Once your photo is uploaded,

click on Edit.

Clicking on edit will bring you to FotoFlexer.

You are going to choose the Decorate Tab on top.

Then click Text.

A little box will come up, you are going to choose transparent and the font style and size font you want.

As far as I know, there is no option to make the font transparent using Fotoflexer,

but you can type the name or url of your blog in and have that somewhere on your photo.

You can even make it tiny and inconspicuous somewhere.

Additionally, if you are using photos from your phone for a blog post or other online publishing,
there are Apps that can add a watermark.
I don't have any experience with this, but here is a link to
The Top Ten Watermark Apps for Your Phone.

In doing some research online, I learned that Pinterest does offer an opt-out code.

It's pretty ding-dong easy to protect your posts from being pinned if you don't want them pinned.

Just post this code in the <head> of your template.

I know it may be a little nerve-wracking to click that Edit Html button, but sometimes you just have to do it if you want to put stuff out there but don't want anyone to use it for any other purposes.

Yes, you even have to take that next SCARY step and click Proceed....

This is right in the beginning, you don't even have to scroll down. You barely even have to read html.

Pinterest also has some Goodies for those of us who want our posts pinned.

They have written code for your buttons.

Just enter your Pinterest user name (NOT your blog url) into the code and enter it into your widget area by using the Add Html option.

Using the "Pin It" Button from Pinterest will allow you to CHOOSE which photo is pinned with your post AND this button will show up in Reader and allow readers to pin right from their Reader.

To do this in Blogger, when you are in Compose Mode writing your post, just click to Html

Add the "Pin It" button at the bottom or top of the post, wherever you prefer, just as you would a button for a blog hop. It's easy enough.

Personally, I know I am too lazy to always enter my blog url and image url and description.

I have seen buttons like this in the sidebars of blogs and I think it is simpler to just state your personal feelings and policies on things on your blog rather than go post by post.

But that is just my 2 cents.