If you frequently crop, resize or manipulate pictures, you could accidentally overwrite the originals with your modified images. Write-protecting the pictures will prevent such mistakes and preserve your original images. You can still open and modify a write-protected image, but you won't be able to save the changes over the original image. Instead, you'll be prompted to use a different file name, ensuring that you maintain separate original and modified versions.
Press "Win-E" to open File Explorer in Windows 8.
Open the uppermost folder containing the pictures you want to protect. All photos in any sub-folders below the primary folder will be included in this process.
Click the "Search" field, select "Type" from the automatically selected Search tab and choose "Picture." Doing so locates all pictures in the current folder and sub-folders.
Hold the "Ctrl" key and click the photos you wish to protect. To protect all photos, click any picture and press "Ctrl-A."
Right-click on any selected photo and choose "Properties."
Click the "Read-only" box multiple times as needed until a check mark appears. The box might be cleared or already filled with a square or check mark. A cleared box means none of the selected pictures are currently write-protected. A square inside the box means some of the pictures are write-protected. A check mark means all of the selected pictures are write-protected.
Click "OK" to write-protect the selected pictures.