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Protecting your work on the Internet

The protection of the aceo market should be the goal of every artists creating ACEO's.

I can not stress the importance of taking precautions.

Let me explain. Having owned an antique and collectible store for many years, I have witness the various destruction of collectibles in the collecting market. For example, antiques quilts reached an unheard of value in the 80's, with antique quilts going for thousands. We soon saw an influx of quilts from China. When people tried to pass them off as good old grannies 100 year old quilt, they were easy to spot as fakes. The methods used to reproduce the quilts was flawed and easily spotted by even a novice collector. But then we started seeing hand stitched cotton fabric, old fabric patterns etc and we knew that we would soon have problems. Sure enough tea stained quilts (the tea gives the fabric an antique hue) they were popping up in some of the better auction houses and they were going into impressive collections. When the fakes were uncovered and the experts could be fooled this lead to a major decline in prices.

The same thing happened in sports cards. Easy to spot at first, but with the new computer age it got really easy for the thieves . Many markets took a hit, and many never recovered. Once trust has been shaken it's hard to regain buyers. Investor naturally want to know their collection will be growing in value and they are getting the real McCoy.

We are seeing the beginning of a bad trend. With the gowning popularity in the ACEO market, art is being lifted right off the Internet. Now is the time to safe guard the ACEO art movement and it's easy!

First step Watermark. It's easy and you have the means right on your computer.

Steps to watermarking your art

To open up MS-paint find the start button located in the bottom left hand corner of your computer screen, then go to program -- Accessories -- Paint.

Once you have the program open you need to hit "file" which is located in the upper right hand corner and then hit the "open" option from the drop down. This will open up a window which will allow you to browse your files and select the picture to which you wish to add your copy right text.

Once you have your picture open you can then select the text tool from the tool bar. It will be designated by a large boldface "A". Once you have that selected two boxes will show up on the tool bar which will allow you to select if the text you are tying has a background or not. Make sure to select the one that does not have a background. This can be hard to determine by just looking at it and it may take a little bit of trial and error to figure out which one works for you.

Once you have the correct one selected you can then place your text where you want it on the picture. I recommend somewhere that doesn't detract from the picture itself but also can't be cropped out easily.

Also you may want to add the copyright symbol © to your picture as well. You can find this on most windows based computers under programs -- Accessories -- System tools -- Character map.