Help & Documentation
How FrameClaim works, and what to do when a scan turns up a match.
Contents
1 · Getting Started
Upload your first photo and get it scanned
Create your account
Sign up at frameclaim.io/signup. No credit card required for the free plan. Check your inbox and click the verification link -- uploading and scanning stay blocked until your email is verified.
Upload your images
From your dashboard, click Upload Images or drag and drop photos. FrameClaim accepts JPEG, PNG, WebP, GIF, and TIFF. Large files are resized and compressed before storage -- no manual resizing needed.
Your image is stored and hashed
We keep your file in cloud storage and record a perceptual hash of it. Uploads also get a watermarked copy you can download. The hash is what we compare candidates against: when a search turns up an image, we hash that image too and measure how close the two are.
Scanning starts
Every image is picked up by a scheduled scan that runs once a week, on Monday mornings UTC, over images that have not been scanned in the last seven days. You can also scan any image yourself at any time. The weekly scan emails you a digest if it finds anything. Scans you run yourself show results in the dashboard straight away and do not send email.
2 · How Scanning Works
What a scan does, and what it doesn't do
What a scan is
One call to Google Vision's web detection API. That is a reverse image search of Google's web index: you give it your photo, it gives back pages and image URLs from its index that it associates with that photo. We store what it returns.
What we don't do
We don't run our own crawlers -- the search itself is Google's index, not ours. What we do add is verification: we fetch each candidate image and compare it to your original before showing it to you. That comparison is ours; the discovery isn't. Open the link and look before you act on anything.
What a scan can miss
A scan only sees what Google has indexed. Copies on pages Google hasn't crawled, behind logins, or inside apps won't show up. The standard scan also skips a list of large social platforms; the Pro Global Takedown scan includes them.
Scan frequency
The scheduled scan runs weekly, on Monday mornings UTC, over images not scanned in the last seven days. This is the same for every plan. You can run a manual scan on any image from your dashboard, up to 20 per hour.
3 · Understanding Alerts
What an alert is telling you, and what it isn't
Match type
Two different things sit on an alert. Match type -- Full match, Partial match, Page reference -- says which of Google Vision's result sets the page came back in; that's a category, not a measurement. The similarity score is the measurement: we downloaded the candidate image, hashed it, and compared it to your original. Verified means that score cleared our threshold.
What an alert contains
The page URL, the domain, the page title where Vision returned one, the image URL it reported, and -- where we could fetch the image -- the similarity score, the HTTP status we got, and when we checked. There is still no screenshot and no archived copy, and we fetch the image rather than the page, so a page that has since come down may still be listed.
Check it before you act
A result can be your own portfolio, a client or licensee, press coverage, or an image that isn't yours at all. FrameClaim can't tell the difference, so open the page yourself first.
Actions available
From any alert: generate a DMCA notice, generate a license demand, whitelist the domain, mark resolved, or archive.
4 · DMCA Takedowns
How to generate and send a DMCA notice
Note first
FrameClaim generates the notice but does not act as your legal representative, and nothing here is legal advice. A DMCA notice includes a statement made under penalty of perjury, so read the whole letter and confirm the use really is unauthorized before you send it. For non-responsive infringers, consult a copyright attorney.
Open the alert
Find the match in your Alerts tab and click Generate DMCA Notice. A takedown action costs $9 and covers that one match; Pro includes them without limit. Seeing the match costs nothing -- you only pay when you decide to act on it.
Pre-filled letter and evidence pack
FrameClaim fills in your name, the page URL, your image URL, and the statements a DMCA notice under 17 U.S.C. 512 normally carries. Read it and edit anything that isn't accurate for your situation. The action also produces an evidence pack PDF recording what was found, where, and when.
You send it
The letter copies to your clipboard. FrameClaim does not send it, and does not look up the site's abuse contact or registered DMCA agent -- finding the right recipient, usually via the site's contact page, its host, or the Copyright Office's DMCA agent directory, is up to you.
Track status
Mark a notice as sent from the Alerts tab to keep track of what you've actioned. Response times vary widely by site, and FrameClaim has no way to know whether yours was received or read.
5 · License Demand Letters
Asking for payment when your work has been used without permission
What is a license demand?
Where a site is using your image without permission, some photographers ask for a retroactive licensing fee instead of, or alongside, a takedown. A demand letter is a written request for that payment. Whether it's worth sending is a judgement call, and whether you're owed anything is a legal question FrameClaim can't answer for you.
How to send one
Open the alert and click License Demand. FrameClaim drafts a letter naming the page and the use and copies it to your clipboard. As with the DMCA notice, you send it yourself.
The amount
FrameClaim has no licensing-rate data and is not a valuation service. Edit the figure in the letter to what your work actually licenses for before you send it.
6 · Whitelisting Domains
Mark authorized uses so they don't trigger alerts
When to whitelist
If you have licensed your image to a site, or want to ignore matches from your own portfolio, partner sites, or press coverage, add that domain to your whitelist.
How to whitelist
Go to Settings then Whitelisted Domains, or click Whitelist Domain directly from an alert. Enter the exact domain (e.g., example.com). Subdomains are matched separately, so blog.example.com needs its own entry.
Effect on scans
Future scans skip whitelisted domains. Alerts you already have from that domain stay in your list -- resolve or archive those yourself.
Removing a domain
Remove any whitelisted domain at any time from Settings.
7 · Scan History
Track when images were scanned and what was found
Per-image history
Click any image in your dashboard to see when it was last scanned, how many alerts it has generated, and the details of each match.
Manual scans
Click Scan Now on any image to scan it there and then. This is available on every plan, up to 20 scans per hour.
Retention
Scan history stays with the image for as long as the image is in your account. Deleting an image deletes its scan history and alerts along with the files.
8 · Billing & Plans
What's free, what a takedown costs, and what Pro adds
How the pricing works
Free to look, flat fee to act. Monitoring and results cost nothing -- you pay only when you decide to act on a match, and FrameClaim takes no percentage of anything you recover.
Free plan
Up to 25 monitored images. Weekly scheduled scans plus manual scans. Every verified match shown in full -- the page URL, the page title, and the measured similarity score. Alert dashboard, domain whitelisting, watermarked download copies, and Flickr import.
Takedown actions
$9 buys one takedown action for one match: an evidence pack PDF recording what was found, where, and when, plus a DMCA takedown letter pre-filled with your details and that match. $35 buys five. These are one-off purchases, not a subscription, and you send the letter yourself.
Pro plan
$15 a month. Unlimited monitored images and unlimited takedown actions, plus the Global Takedown scan, import from your website, and custom watermarks using your own text or logo. Scan frequency is the same on every plan.
If you subscribed before this change
You keep your current plan at your current price for as long as the subscription stays active. Nothing about your account changes unless you change it.
Upgrade
Go to Settings then Billing or visit frameclaim.io/pricing. Upgrade takes effect immediately.
Cancel
Settings then Billing then Cancel Subscription. Pro features stay active until the end of your billing period. No cancellation fees. Takedown actions you have bought are not a subscription and there is nothing to cancel.
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