Our goal at groupForm = How to be visible without being extractable
Making work public does not have to mean giving it away. This guide outlines simple, practical ways artists can share their work online while protecting authorship, context, and value in an era of large-scale scraping and automated reuse.
These practices are not about hiding. They are about control.
1. Don’t publish straight from your phone
Images taken on your phone are high-resolution, metadata-rich originals. Treat them as source files, not publish files.
Before sharing:
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Never upload the original camera file
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Assume anything posted publicly can be copied
2. Use screenshots of images to reduce metadata and resolution of file, still fine for viewing.
One of the easiest protections is also one of the most effective.
Why it works:
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Removes most metadata
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Reduces resolution
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Flattens the file
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Breaks clean image lineage
How:
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Open the image full screen
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Zoom until it looks right
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Take a screenshot
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Share the screenshot instead of the original
This preserves visibility while lowering extractive value.
3. Lower resolution on purpose
Online images do not need to be sharp or printable.
Best practice:
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Long edge: ~1200–1600px
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Avoid print-quality files
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Slight softness is fine
4. Avoid perfect documentation shots
Clean, centered, evenly lit images are ideal for datasets — not for protecting work.
Instead: use angles, let shadows exist, crop edges, show surface and texture
Humans read nuance. Models/AI read patterns.
5. Crop irregularly
You do not owe the internet a full, unobstructed view. Instead share details, fragments, corners, partial views
Save full documentation for private conversations, collectors, or in-person viewing.
6. Let reality introduce “noise”
Not filters — reality.
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Natural grain
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Hands in frame
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Uneven light
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Slight motion
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Studio shadows
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Paper or surface texture
These elements humanize the work and reduce automated reuse.
7. Share process more than finished work on Socials
Finished images are the most valuable to scrape.
Process builds trust without giving everything away:
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In-progress stages
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Tools and materials
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Tests and failures
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Notes and sketches
Collectors care about how work is made.
8. Never post flat files or scans publicly, the quality of an iphone image should never be put online.
This is critical.
Avoid posting:
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Flat scans
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Print-ready files
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Straight-on reproductions
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High-resolution documentation meant for archives
If it can be printed cleanly, it can be reused cleanly.
9. Strip metadata when exporting
If you must export an image:
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Remove location data
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Export “for web”
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Avoid highest-quality presets
Most phones and editors include these options.
10. Post less — intentionally
Not everything needs to be public.
Scarcity protects:
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Value
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Meaning
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Your relationship to the work
Silence is not absence. It is authorship.
The principle behind all of this
You are not hiding your work.
You are controlling how it circulates.
Visibility does not require surrender.
Sharing does not require extraction.
At Groupform, we believe artists should decide how their work is seen, shared, and valued — and these practices support that choice.