Questions and answers

No. Register My Photos is a file preparation tool. We are not a law firm and not affiliated with the U.S. Copyright Office. We do not decide whether your photos are published, who the author or claimant is, or whether registering is right for you. If you need advice, speak to a lawyer.

No. The checker is a web page that runs in your browser, on your phone, tablet or computer. It reads your photos in the browser, and a security setting in the page stops it sending anything to any other site. The only things it ever sends to us are your license key, to check it is valid, and, when you download a file, the key and the kind of file (titles list, CSV or zip), so we know when an export happened. Never a photo, file name or title.

The two group options for photographs: Group Registration of Published Photographs (GRPPH) and Group Registration of Unpublished Photographs (GRUPH). Each claim covers up to 750 photos for one filing fee, $55 when we checked on 21 October 2026.

That is your decision, and the tool never makes it for you. The Copyright Office explains publication in Circular 42 and Compendium chapter 1900. In its words, a photo is published when copies are distributed to the public, or offered to a group for further distribution or display; simply displaying a photo is not publication in itself.

Yes. Open the checker in Safari on an iPhone or iPad, or Chrome on Android, tap Choose photos and pick from your photo library or files. Everything still runs in your browser and nothing is uploaded. Choosing a whole folder and dragging photos in work only in a desktop browser. Large claims make big zips, so a computer is easier for hundreds of photos, and you will need to upload the zip to eCO from the same device.

For group photo claims the Office accepts JPEG, GIF or TIFF only. The checker can re-save PNG and WebP files as JPEG for you. For HEIC or RAW files, export JPEG or TIFF from your photo editor first.

The checker splits them into separate claims automatically: up to 750 photos each, and for published photos one calendar year per claim. Each claim is its own eCO application and fee.

We fill in the Copyright Office's own Excel template, downloaded unchanged from copyright.gov, with the photo number, title, file name and (for published photos) month and year of publication. The file is named with your group title and case number, as the Office asks. File names in the zip match the list exactly.

Under US law, statutory damages and attorney's fees are generally only available if a photo was registered before the infringement began, or within three months after it was first published (17 U.S.C. 412, as explained in Compendium section 1114.5). For published photos, the Office strongly encourages filing every three months, within three months of the earliest publication date in the claim (Compendium section 1114.5).

It may. The Office has proposed raising the group photo fee from $55 to $85. It sent the proposed schedule to Congress on 14 July 2026 and says it aims to bring new fees in during fall 2026. Check copyright.gov/about/fees.html before you file. Our price does not include the Office fee.

Yes, within 14 days of a payment, as long as you have not exported anything (a titles list, CSV copy or zip) with your license key since that payment. After an export we refund only a duplicate charge or a technical fault we cannot fix. Try the free checker first: it runs every check and previews your titles list. See the refund policy.

Yes. The free checker runs every check and shows a preview of your titles list. A license unlocks the downloads.