36 Replies

Thank you so much for sharing <3 I will have to look at this .. Very sad about someone stealing your photo :(

Bethann when you do this you will get a long list including all the people that have pinned your photo. So you have to look through the list for possible sites that may be using your photo!

Ellie thank you very much for this very useful info as so many of us, like you, are plagued with these kinds of people. I have one person who has one of my pics as her personal profile pic!! It beggars belief!!
This link is very useful. Many thanks and sorry for your experience xx

Ellie, this goes on such a lot and that is why so many of us add a watermark to our pictures. Now I know watermarks can be removed by someone who is determined to use other people’s photos but I think it will put off most of them because basically they are lazy so and so’s. I just put my name on and that is enough for me but other cakers have lovely little logos. Go to Picmonkey. It is free and it is so easy to add some text (all sorts of fonts available and you can change the colour, size and opacity). Go and have a play! :-D xx

You’re welcome Calli! I hope it will help a fellow baker out there! My daughter said I should watermark my photos but being I’m a Grandma baking for my family and do not have a business name not sure what I would use as a watermark. Maybe one of you can help me with this!

Oh Julia we must have been typing at the same time!!! LOL!! Thank you for the info! I will definitely check out Picmonkey! I guess I will do like you and use my name! Thanks again!

You can just put Ellie 1985 on – that would be perfect. I just put Julia Hardy Cakes as you can see on my pics. I can personal message you if you need any help xx

Such useful information Ellie. Thanks for posting. I’m a hobbyist with a FB cake page, I’ve never watermarked any of my cakes. I’m definitely going to check out Picmonkey. ☺️

This is a great description of how to watermark with Picmonkey thanks to Rose Bakes :-)
http://rosebakes.com/easy-way-watermark-picture-picmonkey/

Thanks so much Julia. Going to save the link and definitely check it out. Really appreciate the info!! 👍 👍

Oh you’re most welcome June. Looking forward to seeing everyone watermarking from now on – let’s stop those naughty photo theives or at least make their lives a little more difficult! :-D xx

I’ve been out picking my granddaughter up from school! Thank you June and thank you Julia for the info about Picmonkey!!! I will definitely check it out!! I think I should be able to do this with the photo program I have on my computer! Yes I guess we all need to protect our photos from unscrupulous people even us hobby bakers! Thanks again everyone!

Ellie, thank you so much for the link about how to do reverse image search. I will definitely have to try this out! The cake that you made for your granddaughter was so adorable. So sorry someone stole the picture and tried to pass it off as their own work!

Thanks Toni! I know you went through this with your Minnie Mouse cake! I did the reverse search on my Owl Family Cake and it is on some foreign site that apparently a bunch of people have downloaded it from. I have no idea what to try and do about that and I doubt it would do any good anyway! I guess the best thing to do is put a BIG watermark across our photos so that it would be hard to remove or cover!

…thanks.

Am so sorry someone stole your photo Ellie, its terrible that people can still keep doing this!!! I am not great on computers but I think you are right, its probably time to start watermarking our photos!!! Thank you so much for the link!!! :-) xx

Thank you Elli!! It is too bad that there are dishonest people out there!

Very interesting forum!!! Thank you so much Ellie for bringing such a matter up and for the info re the reverse search!

Your welcome Marlene!!! The reverse image search can be used for more than to see if your photos have been stolen! Maybe you downloaded a photo and can’t remember who to credit if you use it for inspiration. Just reverse search!

Yes Ellie, that is also very useful! Some time ago I wanted to give credit to a cake that I was inspired from for a cake that I had done and it too me ages and various google searches to find it! Thanks once again for bringing such a useful tool to our notice!

Yes, now with this tool, there’s no excuse not to find the original creator that inspired you, and give them credit,

Thanks ladies!! I happy something good has come out of this!

Oh dear poor you, what a horrible experience and good job your friend told you. It is quite fascinating that people will go to such dishonest lengths. I too have been subject to this, thankfully someone also emailed me and told me and she also told them off for nabbing my photo haha! The daft thing is, if they need to steal your photos to promote themselves, then surely they must be able to reproduce it if asked to make one like it, which is unlikely if they had to steal the photo in the first place? thank you for the info on tracking these bleeders! :) I have on occasion found some of my tutorials nicked with their own logos on (I don’t watermark mine but guess I should .. not that it makes any difference as they wipe it off anyway). xx

Thanks Ellie for your useful info!

Well she is at it again!!!! I just went to the FB page of the person that was using my photo! She just posted a Louis Vuitton shoe and shoe box that a baker from Quebec (she is in Sherman Oaks California) posted on CakeCentral a year and a half ago! I guess she hasn’t learned her lesson! Time to call her out publicly! You may want to go to Itty Bitty Cake Pops & More on FB and see if she is using any of your photos! I’m going to message the baker now! This makes me so mad!!! I knew she did get that she was doing anything wrong!!!

The Louis Vuitton cake has been removed. The baker that told me about my cake in the comments under the Vuitton cake asked if they had made this cake and they replied that no they had not but they made one exactly like it. So she than asked why don’t you post a photo of the cake you made. At which point they deleted the cake! I’ve been reverse searching all the cakes on her page and about 3/4 of them are not hers!!!

Ellie, the only way your going to stop this person is to report them to FB admin. On your main FB page, if you scroll down on the left, there’s a “Report a Problem”. Send them the info, this persons FB page. They will deal with them. If necessary, FB admin will shut her/him down….close the page. Tell FB what you told us, about the reverse search and how 3/4 of the content isn’t hers. Trust me…they will deal with her/him.

Ellie…. I’m so sorry to hear….
I have successfully reported these ongoing invasion of intellectual property… Hope these screenshots help. I’ve put arrows to help. But it’s pretty self explanatory and easy to follow. It can take a couple of days for them to get back to you.
1. Open on top right hand side by settings

2. Then this page opens with a list of option, follow the prompts

Good luck…. It’s on ongoing thing and Ive had shed loads of violations of my intellectual property… I watermark still, but it can easily be photoshopped out. But by watermarking, it just makes their life harder. :)

Thanks for posting Calli and being so succinct. I knew someone here from CD would have experienced this & dealt with FB admin. 👍

June, its such a pain in the bum!!! I’m now resigned to the fact that once anything is in the public domain there is little you can do to control it. I see this over and over again with so many designers. It’s just not possible to track it at all xx

Calli, my cake club leader has been a pro decorator for 40 yrs. Long before cake decorating took the explosion of today. She DOESNT have a FB page, Twitter account, Instagram page….just old fashioned advertising by word of mouth and client referral. Does have a web page tho. She shows her cakes the old fashioned way…..glossy’s in a book. Actually, she recently got a IPad, and shows her clients cake pics on that. She has told us time and again at our meetings, once your pics are “out there” via social media…..there open game. Pretty darn hard to stop. My bro-in-lw did a photo shoot for a firefighters calendar in the 90’s. His face is still everywhere ….worldwide….after all these years. We even found firefighter figures in the Dollar store with his face on it. He and his other firefighters never signed a release clause. It was a local photographer and supposed to be a local fund raiser. Obviously he took the pics, sold them to someone.

I’m with your club leader…. Hear hear!!!
I totally agree re the media, once out there that’s it. That’s why I don’t sweat the small stuff anymore. Go crazy otherwise. I used to paint on pottery and found my creations in a local newspaper add and was unable to get past the very closed advertising doors. Shame your bil is not getting royalties on his much publicised face everywhere. 😥
Also, with cake competitions comes hoards of people with cameras … So you ain’t got a chance in hell at that point.
As they say in the Frozen Movie….. Let it go. 😀😀

Good evening ladies! I’ve messaged several bakers today and a few have gotten back to me and messaged her. Calli I think I will take yours and June advice and report her to FB. Since she posted another stolen photo this morning she is apparently not going to stop on her own. I don’t know how she thinks she can get away with this when she has had multiple people confront her about it the last few days!!! And yes Calli you’re right once you put it out there on social media you really have little if any control of it anymore! Thanks for all your support, comments and advice!!!

Shame Ellie, this is so frustrating for you, I hope it gets sorted soon xx

thanks for advise us!!! i’m speechless….

Yes Elli….do report to FB.
Calli….my b-in-lw doesn’t care…it’s become a family chuckle…. 😊