© Copyright and licenses
Not released yet (comes after 1.4.0) Every photo has rights: a copyright notice, a creator and a license. They say who made the photo and what others may do with it. LibrePhotos reads them from your files, lets you set them for one photo or many, and can give new photos your own default.
The licenses
A license is one of this fixed list. Each Creative Commons license links to its official deed on creativecommons.org, which explains it in full.
| License | What others may do |
|---|---|
| All rights reserved | Look at the photo, but not reuse it without your permission. |
| CC BY 4.0 | Share and adapt it, also commercially, if they credit you. |
| CC BY-SA 4.0 | Share and adapt it, also commercially, if they credit you and share their adaptation under the same license. |
| CC BY-NC 4.0 | Share and adapt it for non-commercial use, if they credit you. |
| CC BY-NC-SA 4.0 | Share and adapt it for non-commercial use, if they credit you and share their adaptation under the same license. |
| CC BY-ND 4.0 | Share it unchanged, also commercially, if they credit you. |
| CC BY-NC-ND 4.0 | Share it unchanged for non-commercial use, if they credit you. |
| CC0 1.0 | Anything, without asking or crediting: you give up your rights. |
| Public domain (Public Domain Mark 1.0) | Anything: the photo is free of known copyright, for example because it is very old. |
There is no free-text license and no field for your own license link: a link to a license always goes to the deed above.
The rights of one photo
Open a photo and the info panel (i) has a Rights section below the tags; the photo page has a Rights card. It shows the license with its marks and a link to its deed (What … allows), the copyright notice and the creator. A value marked From file is the one the photo's file states; the others were set in LibrePhotos.
Click the pencil to edit them: Copyright (for example © 2026 Anna Berger), Creator and
License, then the check mark to save. Leaving a field empty removes it. Each change is recorded in
the photo's edit history and, with Write edits to files on,
written to the file or its sidecar.
A photo without any rights says so. If you set default rights, the section offers Use my default, which fills in the photo's empty fields from it.
The rights of many photos
Select photos, open Photo actions and pick Set rights…. The dialog shows the license, creator and copyright the selected photos share. Where they differ, the field says Mixed: keep each photo's. Only the fields you change are set; the others stay as each photo has them, and a field you empty is removed from every photo.
{year} in the copyright becomes the year each photo was taken, so © {year} Anna Berger gives a
photo from 2019 © 2019 Anna Berger (a photo without a date gets the year it was added).
Values a photo's file states are kept, so a photo that came with someone else's copyright keeps it. When some of the selected photos have rights from their files, the dialog offers Also change N photos whose rights come from their files to replace those too.
Default rights for your photos
Settings > Metadata > Rights for your photos holds a creator, a copyright notice (with
{year}) and a license, saved with your other settings.
- New photos get them when they are scanned, for each field their file does not state. This is recorded as your edit, but a scan never writes to your files: use Write existing edits to files to put them there.
- Photos you already have keep their rights until you click Apply to my photos…. The dialog says how many photos it reaches and asks whether to Only fill in what is missing (a copyright, creator or license a photo already has stays) or change Every photo. Changing the default later does not change photos that already have it, so a published photo is never relicensed behind your back.
On public pages
A license is your deliberate statement of what others may do with a photo, so a public album, a public photo and a photo link show the rights of a photo that has a license, whatever the sharing switches say: the license, and with it the copyright notice and the creator. A photo without a license shows visitors no rights at all, not even a copyright or creator its file carries: cameras and apps often write your full name there, and you never chose to publish it. The license can be one you set, your default rights or one the file states.
People you share your library with see a photo's rights as you do, with or without a license.
Visitors see a License section first in the photo's details (under the photo on a photo link):
- the license with its marks, the copyright notice and the creator;
- one sentence on what they may do, and a row each for sharing, changing and commercial use, with what the license asks of them (credit, the same license for adaptations);
- a link to the license's deed;
- for a license that asks for credit, How to credit: a line naming the creator, the page and the license with its deed, with a copy button (on plain HTTP, where browsers do not allow copying, the line can be selected).
A photo without a license shows visitors no License section.
In your files
LibrePhotos reads the rights from these tags, the first one a photo has:
| Field | Tags, best first |
|---|---|
| Copyright | XMP:Rights, IPTC:CopyrightNotice, EXIF:Copyright |
| Creator | XMP:Creator, IPTC:By-line, EXIF:Artist |
| License | XMP-cc:License, then XMP-xmpRights:WebStatement when it is a Creative Commons deed; XMP-xmpRights:Marked set to true without either is All rights reserved (Lightroom's "Copyrighted") |
A WebStatement that links to anything else, such as your own rights page, is not a license and is
left alone.
With Write edits to files on, a change is written back:
| Field | Save to sidecar | Save to media file |
|---|---|---|
| Copyright | XMP-dc:Rights | XMP-dc:Rights and EXIF:Copyright, and IPTC:CopyrightNotice if the file already has IPTC data |
| Creator | XMP-dc:Creator | XMP-dc:Creator and EXIF:Artist, and IPTC:By-line if the file already has IPTC data |
| License | XMP-cc:License and XMP-xmpRights:WebStatement (the deed), XMP-xmpRights:UsageTerms (the license's name and deed), XMP-xmpRights:Marked (true, false for CC0 and the Public Domain Mark) | the same |
Lightroom, digiKam and other apps read these tags, so the license travels with the photo. A copyright or creator is written on one line: line breaks become spaces.
A rescan keeps the rights you set in LibrePhotos, like your other edits, and Restore from file takes them from the file again (see How a rescan treats your edits).