Photographing Money

[The Ghost of FM]

I realize it is illegal to take pictures of money for illegal purposes like counterfeiting but what about taking pictures of it for art's sake? Must only partial pictures of bills be taken or does the resolution become a legal issue if there's too much detail?

I basically wanted to do some artistic photography of money and want to make sure I am not doing anything against the rules of picture hosting sites or the law in general.

Cheers!

[The Ghost of FM]

Have I posted this question in the wrong forum?

If so, can a moderator move it to the correct one.

My apologies for the bump.

Cheers!

[-MasterChief-]

i think its only illegal when you start printing it. .02.

[Mark1]

You can print it all you want as far as I know. Just not at (or near) 100% size. In other words you can shrink it or blow it up, no problem. I woud not worry about it unless you want to shoot it straight on as if on a copy stand. Anything else would be fine.

[The Ghost of FM]

Thanks for your input on this!

I appreciate the help.

Cheers!

[Grimes]

By the way, if you run into problems, Photshop has built in protection to prevent you from editing images of currency. You may have to rotate or crop some images so that it will not "bitch" at you. Haha.

[The Ghost of FM]

By the way, if you run into problems, Photoshop has built in protection to prevent you from editing images of currency. You may have to rotate or crop some images so that it will not "bitch" at you. Haha.
I have Photoshop Elements 6 and haven't seen it react to any of the files I have been working on so far but, I am working with Canadian currency so perhaps there are no safeguards or filters built in for that?

Cheers!

[photoguy6405]

It is my understanding that it is perfectly legal to photograph money for art's sake, and even for commercial purposes in advertising, etc., just not in any way that could reasonably be used for counterfeit. At least in the US. Not sure about other countries.

[BroX]

When one of the staff at work threw a (euro) bank note on the brand new colour copy machine to check its quality it immediately locked up and we needed to wait a couple of days for the service mechanic to come and 'reboot' it ;-)

[atracksler]

I'd err on the safe side and not do the whole thing, just partial shots.

[sam walker]

Many years back I worked for one of my towns better printers.All high quality full color work. The day we knew how good we were was when we got the unannounced visit from the Secret Service. Very nice agents who walked in and demanded a tour. "just a precaution" they assured us. They keep a list of the nations better shops. We gave them the tour so that they would find our nothing to hide. I found out later the surprise SS visit is considered a high compliment to one's craft
Sam

[Aeth]

http://digitalmedia.oreilly.com/2006/05/03/dekepod.html <----- nice little gem on what's what and who's who.

P.S. This guy really reminds me of Yahtzee from Zero Punctuation, except for not as funny.

[Hinson]

By the way, if you run into problems, Photshop has built in protection to prevent you from editing images of currency. You may have to rotate or crop some images so that it will not "bitch" at you. Haha.

What version of PS is that? I just saved an image of a one dollar bill from this google page (http://www.google.com/search?q=dollar+bill&ie=utf-8&oe=utf-8&aq=t&rls=org.mozilla:en-US:official&client=firefox-a) and opened it CS4. Had no problem with including printing. It actually scared me how real it looked. Made sure to run it through the shredder so as not to get any visits from the feds.