Choosing your copyright name

Unpinched separates three names. You'll meet all three when you set up your account and submit your first image, and the differences matter — both for your privacy and for the legal weight of your authorship.

The three names

Login name (username). What you sign in with. Any name that is not already taken on Unpinched. Private to you and us.

Copyright name. The legal author attribution recorded against every licence we issue. Embedded in each image file's EXIF and XMP metadata. Shown on the public licence registry. This is the name buyers and the wider public associate with your work.

Legal name. Collected separately when you sign the Contributor Licence Agreement. The CLA links your copyright name to your legal name. Not published.

Why we recommend a pseudonym

We recommend choosing a copyright name that is not your legal name. A copyright name is a professional pseudonym — it is entirely legal to use one, and it keeps your real identity private.

When licences are issued, Unpinched provides you with a signed statement linking your legal name to your copyright name, so your ownership is always provable. You retain full authorship rights under UK copyright law (Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988, ss.77–78) and the Berne Convention — using a pseudonym does not weaken them.

How you choose one

A copyright name is required to submit images. You can:

Use the Unpinched name selector (the default). The selector generates personal-name suggestions screened against known trademarks and well-known names. This protects your privacy and ensures your copyright name is unique on the platform. The generated names are deliberately distinctive so they don't accidentally clash with someone else's brand.
Apply for a Verified Copyright Name if you already publish work under an established professional name (for example on Getty, Alamy, or your own portfolio). Verified Copyright Names require manual review of your published credits and a small token fee. Contact [email protected] before you submit your first image.
Use your legal name if you prefer. We don't stop you — the privacy advisory above is a recommendation, not a rule. Studios and company names are not permitted.

A copyright name is permanent

Your copyright name cannot be changed after your first submission is accepted. This is because the name is recorded against every licence issued for every image you publish, and the public registry needs those records to remain stable. Choose carefully.

If you change your mind before submitting, you can pick a different name from the generator.

What happens to embedded copyright data

When you submit an image, the file itself may contain a copyright name. Either you set one in your camera's IPTC settings, or your editing software wrote one in. Often there isn't one at all.

If the file already contains a copyright name, the submission will only be accepted from a user whose Unpinched copyright name is an exact match. This prevents someone uploading another photographer's work and claiming it.
If the file does not contain a copyright name, Unpinched will write your chosen copyright name into the file automatically when the image is accepted.

For the smoothest submissions, configure your camera to record your chosen copyright name in its IPTC / copyright settings. Every frame you take will then carry the right attribution from the moment of capture.

How attribution appears in use

The Unpinched licence terms require publishers to credit every image to its creator, typically in the form:

Image: {name}, Copyright {year}

Your copyright name is what appears in that line, on the public registry, and in the file's metadata. It is the canonical author attribution wherever the image is used.