Imitation is the sincerest form of flattery.

I must agree. Doesn’t it give you that warm fuzzy feeling when you see another baker attempt to replicate your cake, regardless if he did it well or not? Personally, it makes me think that I must have done something right because somebody was inspired to make a similar cake, or a client loved it so much that he wants to have one done for him. It makes me feel proud and confident of my skills and talents. But to have another cake decorator or baker grab your photo and claim it as his own? Now that’s a different story.

I’ve seen a lot of posts on Instagram and on Facebook of angry cake decorators both here in the Philippines and in other countries demanding that photos of their work be taken off certain sites who claimed their masterpieces. I still haven’t experienced this personally, but I think I know how it feels. If it happened to me, I would be furious that somebody would take credit for my cake, when it was me who spent hours, days, weeks, and perhaps many sleepless nights planning, baking, and decorating it.

Maybe like me, you still haven’t experienced this yet, but why wait for that time to come? There will always be some lazy but enterprising soul who’ll grab pictures over the Internet to build his cake portfolio and present it to his clients as his own. So what should we do to protect our cake pictures?

The easiest solution would be to place watermarks. I am not sure what software to use when you take photos using a DSLR camera, but if you’re an iPhone user like me, photo editing apps will provide you a quick solution. (Using a professional camera would yield better pictures, but a DSLR camera takes time to set up and I am no photography pro. When you’re in a rush to take photos between finishing your cake and making a delivery, the iPhone, or any camera phone, is the best option.) I use Moldiv to edit my photos and to place a watermark, usually at the bottom corner. I use the font “Jenna Sue” for my watermark, and I play around with the font colors and shading to ensure that the watermark pops out from the picture. (I just realized that I still haven’t changed my watermark from “www.facebook.com/pinkplate” to “www.pinkplatemealsandcakes.com”. I will be doing that moving forward.)

 

However, there are Photoshop geniuses out there who can remove watermarks and replace them with something else. So what’s another thing you can do? Here’s a suggestion: why not put your logo in the background?

 

Then, take a picture of your cakes in front of it.

I originally did not intend for this wall to be the backdrop of my cakes. I had wanted it simply as a wall decor. However, I realized that placing the store logo behind the cake would make photos more difficult to edit. 

You might think that my backdrop takes the focus away from the cake. Yes, I must agree especially if the cake has shades of pink similar to the color that I used on my wall, but I try to remedy that by adjusting the focus on the cake and making it sharper than the background. I think that my method serves the purpose of ensuring that nobody steals photos of my cake.  Imagine all the work one has to do to remove my logo from my photos. You have to be very thorough to cut out the cake from the picture, making sure that all the pink polka dots lurking behind the cake are removed as well. Plus, those distinctive pink polka dots immediately give my photographs their basic identity: that whatever is in the photo was made by Pink Plate Meals and Cakes. I’ve been taking photos of my cakes this way for more than two years now.

If you can’t have an entire wall painted with your logo on, start with a simple backdrop. This is how this idea started.

This may not work for everyone, but it is something that works well for me. 👍 Let me know what you think! 😀