Mike Monroe Ph wrote:
I'm considering outsourcing retouching of my photos, what assurances are there that your photos won't be stolen or misused?

None.
But a good professional would never do it because:

1. He looses you as a client
2. He damages his own reputation => looses other clients
3. He won't be able to benefit from the misuse, only from working for clients, so practically that would be a business suicide
4. He is in a legal trouble.

If you are so very concerned and want to make it very clear and explicit you can sign a written agreement with the vendor of your choice.

Mike Monroe Ph wrote:
I'm considering outsourcing retouching of my photos, what assurances are there that your photos won't be stolen or misused?

Anything that is on the Internet can be stolen. In most case's a simple copy and paste is all it takes. Try it and you will see for your self.

anchev wrote:

None.
But a good professional would never do it because:

1. He looses you as a client
2. He damages his own reputation => looses other clients
3. He won't be able to benefit from the misuse, only from working for clients, so practically that would be a business suicide
4. He is in a legal trouble.

This. Anybody who invested time and money building a business wouldn't do a foolish thing like stealing the photos of some random client. If whoever you'd like to work with doesn't seem to fall in this category, don't work with them. Simple as that.

And I might add an advise I first heard from Natalia Taffarel: "You shouldn´t worry about someone stealing your images until you're making enough money with them to have a lawyer on speed dial."

Marcus Christopher wrote:
And I might add an advise I first heard from Natalia Taffarel: "You shouldn´t worry about someone stealing your images until you're making enough money with them to have a lawyer on speed dial."

That's like saying "you should not lock your house and car unless you live in a palace and have a few Rolls Royces".

TMA Photo and Training wrote:
Hera are a few other side things you can consider:

1. Send an agreement form to the retoucher before you begin to work.  Send a pre-notification letter or an agreement type of letter to the retoucher to sign and return to you first as a condition of employment.

Indicate to the retoucher that  "the images have been copyrighted" , and "Do not to share the images with third parties", and  "Make secure arrangements for transmission", and especially  "Do not use, or post, or display the retouched images as examples of their work",   Have them sign this memorandum of notice and understanding as a condition of retouching your images.  It puts others on notice when they have to "sign for" your images to be able to work on them.  This agreement letter shows them you are serious about how your images are handled and the terms of your working together.

In the majority of cases you send images to the retoucher through a third party service (e.g. Google Drive). If you enforce a note "do not share with third parties" and you don't provide your own FTP server to receive the final result that becomes meaningless. You have already shared the files with a third party (Google) and the retoucher cannot return to you the result as you are not allowing him to. The other meaningless thing is "do not use or display the retouched images". How is one supposed to retouch an image without using it and without displaying it? Valid written agreements don't look like that.

A professional retoucher is aware of legal matters. In general if you burden a deal with too much bureaucracy you should expect to be charged a higher rate too. Nobody likes to be pressed or threatened even indirectly. By adding too much "insurance" you are sending another message - not that you are serious but that you are seriously scared and distrust the one you are hiring. Why hire them at all then?

2. Actually Copyright your images to gain additional legal advantages and damages.  You can indeed copyright the images with the US copyright office on-line, from home, for approximately $40 bucks for a very large group of images.  Pre-registration allows you to recover lawyers costs and punitive and extra damages in case you decide to pursue the issue in court.  Some casual scoff-laws will recognize the extra hazards of making your images public if you tell them  "Do not Copy, Do not Distribute, Do not Derive, Do not Share, Do not Publish, under the penalty of law"

Again this is impossible and meaningless. Retouching itself is a process of creating of a derivative. Saving a file is copying. Sharing the end result through a third party file sharing service is a form sharing and distribution.

3. Hidden security programs or image search functions.  There are several services you can research out to see if others are using Your images around the Internet. 

The services of a company like a "DigiMark", or  "Google Reverse Image Lookup"  can provide you with feedback if others are illegally displaying your images.  At Google you can drop your image in question into the Google Image Search Page.   It will then show you where else on the internet it has found another copy of your image!  Helps identify those pesky violators. 

There are also "security embedding algorithms" available that you can bake into your images with a serial number or message hidden within the image itself to prove the image belongs to you.  It will reveal your hidden message as a verification to lawyers and to the court that will prove that you have original ownership of that image and that you took extra security measures to protect it. It goes over real big in court when you can run a program for the judge that shows your undisputed ownership.   Several embedded security programs will even allow you to send out a Robot to try to find your images on the Internet and then to e-mail you back with the offending locations.

Digimarc adds encoding noise to final files (e.g. jpg) and to make it really survive edits it has to be visible which influences badly image quality. Those are the images it can search for. However it doesn't find them. I have been a subscriber some years ago and this service really doesn't help. Plus it is inapplicable for outsourcing of retouching work because you send a raw file to the retoucher, untouched by any plugins whatsoever and you don't want the final result to be with additional noise.

As for Google image search - it is not aimed to be a hidden security program or a service for searching illegally displayed images in particular. It is just an image based web search. Just like TinEye. It may indeed help to find visually similar content on the web but this is not really helpful because 1) it doesn't index and display the images it finds instantly 2) when you can find your image in Google it's usually too late. If you want to prosecute someone for such a misuse: This won't save you money and headache, on the contrary - you would have to spend money for lawyers and waste your time for all this. Much easier to retouch the images yourself.

4. Support up-coming Legislation by contacting your local representatives.   I hear that there is a legislative idea going around that would want to set up a "Small Claims Copyright Court". It would handle claims of XX.XX dollars or less, and make the process of recovering damages much easier and quicker for those who have been violated.  I would certainly favor an easy way to make copyright proceedings short, quick, and inexpensive. 

Easily and quickly E-mail your own congressional representative here:   http://www.house.gov/representatives/find/   or call the house info switchboard at  (202)225-3121.  Tell them you want that "Small Claims Copyright Court" brought forward.   Just type in your zip code   and it will get you started on how to contact your own legislators.

Have you actually done any of the things which you propose? Preparing for a war with the people you work with is not the way to establish mutual trust and respect. Working with the wrong people cannot be fixed with paper work. You cannot put a gun against the head of the vendor and expect some great working relationship.

Benski wrote:
The problem is as a retoucher, you need to be able to showcase your work and use it in a portfolio.

Why is that a problem? It is just a matter of agreement. You can always ask for permission. If the client doesn't allow - of course you won't showcase the image. Another one will allow.