Someone used my photo without permission: what now?

You find your own photo on a website, in a news article, or on a social feed, and you never gave permission for it. The instinct is to fire off an angry message. It's better to first check where the photo is being used, document it, and only then decide what you actually want: removal, a fee, or both.

How do I know if my photo is being used without permission?

A hunch isn't certainty. Maybe you recognise your own style somewhere, or a client sends you a link. To find out whether it really is your photo and where it sits, you use reverse image search: you search on the image itself rather than on keywords.

With a tool like ImageTrace you upload the photo and get back the pages where it appears, with a screenshot for each one. That shows you concretely which sites are using your image. No tool can promise it finds every copy, but you no longer have to check sites one by one.

What evidence do I need?

For a claim, you want to be able to show three things: the URL where the photo appears, a screenshot of that page, and the date you discovered the use. Together they make up documented evidence of what was published, where, and when you found it.

Capturing this matters more than it seems. A social post might be gone tomorrow, and someone who posted your photo without permission often takes it down the moment they hear from you. If you saved nothing, it becomes your word against theirs. ImageTrace gathers the URL, screenshot, and discovery date into a PDF evidence report, so it all sits in one place. A report like that helps you support a claim, though it doesn't decide the legal outcome on its own.

What are my options?

Broadly, you have three routes. You can ask for a license fee after the fact for the use that already happened. You can request a takedown, so the photo is removed. Or you can escalate with a demand letter if the other side ignores you.

What fits depends on who is using the photo. A hobby blog that ran your image without credit usually responds well to a friendly request, perhaps with an invoice attached. A company using your photo in a commercial campaign tends to know better, so a demand letter is the more likely step. ImageTrace includes a customisable demand letter in English or Dutch with the report, but which route you take stays your call.

What does it cost to check this?

A scan has a flat price from €5, and your first scan is free. No percentage comes off a license fee or settlement you recover: you pay only for the scan, at a price you know in advance.

If you check often, you can set up recurring monitoring with a daily digest of new matches. And the more you scan, the lower the price per scan gets. For anyone managing a large collection, that keeps it manageable.

Start with one scan: you'll see straight away where your photo is being used, and you capture the evidence in one go. Read more about how ImageTrace works for editorial photographers.