How to Check If an Image Is Copyrighted (2026 Guide)

Assume any image you didn't create is copyrighted. In most countries protection is automatic, with no notice or registration needed. So the real question is who owns the image and whether you have a license or permission to use it. To find out, check the file's metadata and look for watermarks, run a reverse image search, search the major stock libraries, and read the license on the site where you found it. If you can't find a clear license, don't use the image.

This guide covers seven practical methods to check if an image is copyrighted, from quick manual checks to automated scanners that check many images at once.

Why Checking Image Copyright Actually Matters

Using an image without permission can get expensive. In the US, statutory damages under 17 U.S.C. 504(c) range from $750 to $30,000 per work, up to $150,000 for willful infringement, and are available only for works registered in time (17 U.S.C. 412). Other countries handle damages differently; UK law, for example, has no statutory damages. (This guide is general information, not legal advice.)

Most cases never get to court. Instead, copyright holders, stock agencies and the firms that act for them send demand letters asking for a retroactive license fee. The amounts vary widely by sender, image and use, and a demand letter is a settlement request, not a court judgment. Agencies also use software to find their images online: Getty Images, for example, owns the image-tracking service PicScout.

And it's not just big companies. Freelancers, bloggers, nonprofits, and small business owners receive these letters too. The person who uploaded an image to your site three years ago might be long gone, but the letter comes to the site owner.

The bottom line: for every image you use, you want to know where it came from and what license covers it. Here's how to find out.

Method 1: Check Image Metadata (EXIF and IPTC Data)

Every digital image can carry embedded metadata, invisible information baked into the file itself. The two most relevant standards are EXIF (Exchangeable Image File Format) and IPTC (International Press Telecommunications Council).

This metadata can include:

• Copyright holder name (the photographer or agency)
• Contact information for licensing
• Usage rights and license terms
• Camera and creation details (date, device, GPS coordinates)
• Caption and description fields

If you right-click an image on your desktop and check its properties, you might see some of this data. But most operating systems show only a fraction of what's actually stored in the file. Dedicated tools give you the full picture.

How to do it: Upload the image to a metadata viewer. Look for fields like "Copyright," "Creator," "Rights," "Source," and "Credit." If any of these contain a photographer's name or a stock agency, you have a strong lead on who owns the image and who to ask for a license.

Limitation: Metadata can be stripped. When images pass through social media platforms, CMS systems, or image optimization tools, the metadata often gets removed. An empty metadata result does not mean the image is free to use. The metadata may have been removed at some point, or never added.

Check any image's copyright fields for free with PixGuard's metadata viewer.

Method 2: Look for Visible and Invisible Watermarks

Visible watermarks are the obvious ones: a semi-transparent logo or text overlay stamped across the image, usually by a stock photo agency. If you see one, the answer is simple. That image is copyrighted, and the watermark is there specifically to prevent unlicensed use.

Some images also carry invisible watermarks (sometimes called steganographic or forensic watermarks): marks hidden in the pixel data that you can't see. How well they survive editing depends on the scheme, and only the right detection tools can read them reliably.

But hidden marks aren't how agencies like Getty mainly track down unlicensed use. They rely on visual fingerprinting and image recognition, which find copies by what they look like. So cropping out a watermark, or finding a "clean" copy of a stock photo somewhere else, doesn't make the image licensed.

How to do it: For visible watermarks, a visual inspection is enough. Hidden marks are harder: a detection tool can flag unusual pixel patterns that sometimes indicate a hidden mark, but that isn't proof a watermark is there.

Upload an image to PixGuard's free watermark detector to look for visible watermarks and flag unusual pixel patterns that can indicate hidden marks.

Method 3: Use Reverse Image Search

Reverse image search is one of the fastest ways to trace where an image came from and whether it's being sold commercially.

The two main options:

• Google Images (images.google.com): Click the camera icon and upload an image or paste a URL. Google will show you visually similar images and the websites where they appear. If the image shows up on Shutterstock, Getty, or a photographer's portfolio, you know who to ask about a license.
• TinEye (tineye.com): A dedicated reverse image search engine with an index of billions of images. TinEye is particularly useful because it can sort results by "oldest" appearance, helping you identify the original source. It can also find copies that have been modified or cropped.

How to do it: Upload the image to both Google Images and TinEye. Look for matches on stock photo sites, photographer portfolios, or news agencies. If you find the image being sold on a stock platform, treat it as protected and licensable (stock sites occasionally sell public-domain images too, so check the listing).

Limitation: Reverse image search works well for popular images, but it's not exhaustive. A photograph taken by a local photographer and never uploaded to a major platform might not show results, even though it's still protected by copyright. Remember that under U.S. and international law, virtually every photograph is copyrighted from the moment it's taken. No registration is required.

Method 4: Search Stock Photo Databases Directly

If you suspect an image might come from a stock library, go straight to the source. The major stock platforms all have search functionality that lets you upload an image or search by keyword:

Platform	Search URL	Notes
Shutterstock	shutterstock.com	Reverse image search available
Getty Images	gettyimages.com	Extensive editorial library
Adobe Stock	stock.adobe.com	Integrated with Creative Cloud
iStock	istockphoto.com	Getty's mid-range offering
Alamy	alamy.com	Strong editorial and news coverage
123RF	123rf.com	Budget stock library

How to do it: Visit each platform and use their search features to look for the image. If you find a match, check the licensing terms. Some images are available under Editorial licenses only (meaning you can't use them commercially), while others require specific Extended licenses for certain use cases.

Limitation: This is time-consuming, especially if you're checking more than a handful of images. And it only covers the major commercial libraries. Smaller agencies, independent photographers, and news organizations have their own catalogs that won't show up in these searches.

Method 5: Compute Perceptual Hashes to Find Near-Matches

This method is more technical, but it's powerful. Perceptual hashing (also called pHash) generates a fingerprint based on the visual content of an image rather than its file data. Two images that look the same to the human eye will produce identical or very similar hashes, even if one has been resized, lightly cropped, slightly color-corrected, or saved in a different format.

This matters because simple file comparison (like checking MD5 or SHA hashes) will fail the moment someone makes even a trivial edit to an image. Perceptual hashing is how the professionals do it.

How it works:

1. The image is reduced to a small grayscale representation
2. A discrete cosine transform (DCT) is applied to extract frequency information
3. The result is encoded as a compact hash string
4. Two hashes are compared using Hamming distance; a low distance means the images are visually near-identical

If your image's perceptual hash closely matches one in a stock library's database, that's a strong indicator you're dealing with a copyrighted image that originated from that library.

How to do it: Use a perceptual hash tool to generate a hash of your image, then compare it against the hashes of images you suspect it matches, or against a reference database.

Generate a perceptual hash for any image with PixGuard's free perceptual hash calculator.

Method 6: Read the Source Website's Terms of Use

This one sounds obvious, but it's where a huge number of mistakes happen. If you downloaded an image from a website, go back and read that site's terms of use, image licensing page, or creative commons declaration.

Common scenarios that trip people up:

• Unsplash and Pexels offer images under permissive licenses, but some images on these platforms have been uploaded without the photographer's permission. If the uploader didn't have the rights, the license they granted you is meaningless.
• Wikimedia Commons files are public domain or under free licenses such as CC BY and CC BY-SA (Commons doesn't accept non-commercial-only or no-derivatives licenses). Many require attribution, and CC BY-SA requires edited versions to use the same license. "Creative Commons" does not mean "do whatever you want."
• Pinterest, Tumblr, and social media are not sources of free images. The images posted there are almost always owned by someone else, and reposting them on a social platform does not transfer any rights to you.
• "Free image" websites with vague or nonexistent licensing pages are often scraping images from other sources. If a site offers millions of "free" images but can't clearly explain where they came from, don't trust it.

How to do it: Find the original source of the image. Read every word of their licensing terms. Look for the specific license type (CC0, CC-BY, CC-BY-SA, Editorial Only, Rights Managed, Royalty Free). If you can't find clear licensing terms, assume the image is copyrighted and not available for your use.

Method 7: Use an Automated Copyright Scanner

All of the methods above work, but they share one problem: they're manual. If you're checking a single image before you use it in a blog post, that's manageable. But if you need to audit an existing website with hundreds or thousands of images, manual checking is not realistic.

This is the problem automated copyright scanners solve. These tools crawl your website, collect the images they find, and run several checks at once: metadata analysis, watermark detection, perceptual hashing and, in some tools, reverse image matching and AI-based visual comparison.

What an automated scanner checks for you:

Check	Manual Time	With a Scanner
EXIF/IPTC metadata	2-3 min per image	Automatic
Visible watermarks	30 sec per image	Automatic
Reverse image search	5-10 min per image	Automatic, in tools that include it
Stock database matching	10-15 min per image	Automatic, against the tool's own database
Perceptual hash comparison	Requires technical setup	Automatic

For a website with 500 images, the manual approach adds up to days of work. A scanner runs these checks automatically and leaves you with a shortlist of images to investigate.

This is what we built PixGuard to do. You can check one of your pages free: enter a page URL and we check the 3 largest images on that page, up to 3 times a day. Uploads and 30 image scans need a free account. Account scans check copyright metadata, visible watermarks from major stock agencies and matches against a database of reference image fingerprints, then give each image a 0 to 100 risk score with the signals behind it. Pro and Business add source lookup, which shows web pages where a matching image appears.

It's not the only option out there, but if you need to review hundreds of images, some automation makes the job realistic.

What to Do If You Find Copyrighted Images on Your Site

So you've checked, and you've found images you don't have a license for. Now what? You have three paths:

Remove the Image Immediately

The simplest and safest option. Replace the image with one you've properly licensed, one from a verified CC0 source, or one you created yourself. If a copyright holder hasn't contacted you yet, removing the image significantly reduces your risk, though it doesn't eliminate past liability entirely.

Purchase a Retroactive License

If you want to keep using the image, contact the copyright holder or the stock agency and buy a license. Some agencies offer retroactive licenses, often at a higher price than a normal license, and that can still cost less than disputing a demand letter. This is especially viable when the image is central to your branding or marketing and replacing it would be costly.

Respond to a Demand Letter (If You've Already Received One)

If you've already received a demand letter, do not ignore it. Ignoring a demand letter can lead to escalation, up to and including a lawsuit. Respond promptly, consider talking to a copyright attorney for larger claims, and know that the initial demand is often negotiable.

For a more detailed breakdown of handling demand letters, read our guide on what to do when you get a stock photo copyright claim.

Common Myths About Image Copyright

These misconceptions get people into trouble constantly. Let's clear them up.

"I found it on Google, so it's free to use." Google is a search engine, not a licensing platform. Nearly every image in Google's results is owned by someone. Google Images even shows a "Licensable" badge when the publisher provides licensing information for an image. Finding an image on Google gives you zero rights to use it. More on whether you can use photos from Google Images.

"I credited the photographer, so it's fair use." Attribution is not a license. Giving credit is polite, and some Creative Commons licenses require it, but it doesn't substitute for a license where one is needed. Fair use is a specific US legal defense with four factors that courts evaluate on a case-by-case basis. "I gave credit" is not one of them.

"I edited the image, so it's a new work." Cropping, adding filters, flipping, resizing, overlaying text, or running it through an AI style transfer does not create a new, independent work. Derivative works still require permission from the original copyright holder. Stock agencies' detection tools are specifically designed to catch edited versions.

"The image didn't have a copyright notice, so it's public domain." Copyright protection is automatic. Under the Berne Convention (which has 182 contracting parties), a photograph is copyrighted from the moment it's taken. No notice, no registration, and no watermark is required. The absence of a copyright symbol means nothing.

"It's on social media, so it's public." Posting an image on Instagram, Twitter, or Facebook does not put it in the public domain. The photographer retains copyright. Social media platforms' terms of service grant the platform certain usage rights, not you.

"My web developer / freelancer handled the images, so it's their problem." The website owner is usually the one held responsible for the content on their site. If your developer used unlicensed images, the demand letter comes to you. You might have a separate claim against the developer under your contract, but that's a different legal battle.

A Quick Decision Framework

When you come across an image you want to use, run through this checklist:

1. Can you identify the photographer or copyright holder? If yes, contact them for a license.
2. Is the image on a stock photo platform? If yes, buy the appropriate license.
3. Does the source provide a clear, verifiable license (CC0, CC-BY, etc.)? If yes, follow the license terms exactly.
4. Is the image listed as public domain on a credible source (e.g., Library of Congress, NASA)? If yes, you can usually use it, following any conditions the source lists.
5. Are you unsure about any of the above? If yes, don't use the image.

When in doubt, the lowest-risk image is one you took yourself, one you commissioned, or one you licensed through a reputable platform with a clear paper trail.

Checking the Images Already on Your Website

Checking one image at a time works when you're publishing new content. But what about the hundreds or thousands of images already on your site? The ones uploaded by former employees, contractors, or that intern from 2022?

Those need a different approach. Our guide to checking the images already on your website covers the full process. PixGuard can help with the first pass: a website scan follows links across up to 50 pages and flags images with copyright risk signals, up to your plan's per-scan limit (10 new images per scan on Free). A free account includes 30 image scans, valid for 30 days. No credit card required.

Try a website scan with a free account.