Watermark

paudie

What do you guys think of this one? The watermark that is not the photo.

DaireQuinlan

Its large and obtrusive. The picture is great though ! Are you going for a watermark or a signature ? if the former then you may aswell go the whole hog and paste it over the entire image . If the latter then something unobtrusive in the bottom left would work better.

elven

I'm guessing you're going for a deterrent to stealing the image? besides all the usual hoo-ha about whether it works or not, as far as they go, I think this is not bad. But... I think the font makes it look quite amateurish - and you could do with moving it in and up slightly to take it off the edge of the frame. Is there a turquoise bit in there? You might want to make that less bright so that it's more of an embossed look and less like words stamped on top. Just my two pence worth!

paudie

Cool thanks guys will try again so. There's no turquoise thats just the water I guess. Will try the embossing thing, a bit stuck for fonts in PS but we'll see.

Daire, I know it's a little strange but I want something in between what your saying, more than a signature but less than a full watermark. Maybe I'm just wasting my time and should give away all my photos for free :P

elven

If you're after fonts, just go to www.dafont.com... sorted!

DaireQuinlan

lol ...

(C) Paudie Scanlon 2006

Seriously though, If you're that concerned then don't put your high-res shots up, or if you do then watermark the high-res ones and leave the lower res ones untouched. The chances of any one persons shots getting ripped off though is vanishingly small, unless you're fairly high profile and/or take really really amazing shots.

And for that REAL professional look

paudie

I don't know Daire, I've seen my stuff show up on a few different sites before. I wouldn't ever put up full-res shots anyway, I just want to protect a few images that I'd consider sellable or ones that are going to a magazine. I know what the proper answer is "don't put them up at all" but I still want to let them be seen, just not ripped off

I'm also in the process of getting a site together to sell prints so I'll want to protect those, so that's why I'm trying to figure it out now.


What about this one, I got a bit overwhelmed at that font site so tried a different PS one.

Oriel

Still far too large.
Make it 1/4 the size, and make it less visibile.
Then place it over a key part of the image.

paudie

Just wondering why you think it should be less visible sinecurea?

The way I'm doing it at the moment it'll go in the bottom right of every shot, so that I'm able to batch process them, I think individually doing each one would take up too much time.

I don't think it's too distracting/big at the moment, just enough to be noticeable but not overly so.

I'm starting to get the feeling from you guys that having a small watermark/large signature isn't the way to go.

DaireQuinlan

Where does your ripped off stuff end up ? is it just people blogging them out of whatever site you have them up on ? I wouldn't worry too much about that, even if you intend to distribute commercially. A quick email would solve 99% of your problems, a lot of people seem to have that old idea that if its up on the internet then its fair game. Just stick an unobtrusive copyright notice/signature on the shots and stop worrying about it !

paudie

Fairy Muff

Fireman

I think the water mark is fine, just change the font!!!

PS How do you do the water mark in PS 7


regards Fireman

melekalikimaka

just do low res for online, seriously those watermarks ruin the pictures

magicbastarder

how about something like this?
text layer set to difference, opacity down around 20%. the text was yellowish, but that's easily customisable.

paudie

Fireman, I'm not sure about PS & I'm using CS, but I think they are similar?
I just create a new layer, write the text, then rasterize, emboss, position it. And then flatten the image at the end, if you don't flatten it you won't be able to save it as a jpeg.

Magic: I'm trying to stay away from a full on watermark that will take over the photo, I think I'm going to just go for a small signature in the corner, that way if people do copy the shots I get free advertising

Thanks for all the replies guys.

Oriel

Paudie,
The watermark loks horrible, and completely takes away from the image.
The watermark is to stop people from being able to use the photo, not to stop people from liking the photo!

Oriel

Also, the 'c' in copyright is lowercase.
At the moment, ironically, the watermark is the focus of the image.

melekalikimaka

paudie your shots are excellent(by the way do you have water kit for your cam, how much and what type, hard or soft?) the copyright thing you do to them all really does take away from your images, might i reccommend creating a flash gallery, quality is quite high yet you are unable to download the images?

paudie

Hey Mele I'm using an SPL housing, it's made from Aluminium and reinforced plastic as far as I know, that could be completely wrong though. It's definitely metal at the back and clear at the front Set me back €1300
I was talking to my programmer buddy and he reckons it'll be easy to stick another layer over my galleries so that right click is disabled.
I think I'll go with a small signature for the more important stuff on flickr etc.

Thanks for the replies guys appreciate the help.

Now this is constructive crit

FreeAnd..

I was talking to my programmer buddy and he reckons it'll be easy to stick another layer over my galleries so that right click is disabled.

To be honest that is pretty worthless advice, if someone wants to steal your image then all they have to do is save the page or do a print screen. If they save the page all the images will be automatically downloaded onto their PC.

As for the watermark, i definitely think it takes away from the image. I would agree with a different font + location. By the way what sites were stealing your images previously?

paudie

Nothing too serious just a couple of low key surf sites/blogs. The thing with disabling right click is that it stops them at first try, I know there's ways around it but there's ways around everything really. I don't think most people would be that interested in my photos to go to anymore trouble than that really.
Also magazines wouldn't usually be interested in a shot that's been a few different websites/blogs already. So that was my other reason.
I'm probably being overly cautious to be honest. I reckon I'll just go with a small signature.

Fireman

Paudi

I followed the step by step on your tuition on watermark and had no problem except for the font size which I seem to have it at max but it is only looks about a size 8 on the photo Please help!!!


NB I will certainly be using the watermark as I have often e-mailed photos to potential buyers but had to compress them down so they could not use them but it doesn't look as good as full size

regards Fireman

paudie

I had that problem too with the small font, mine appears large on this because the photo has been compressed to a max width of 800pixels, but when I try to put the watermark on the full res shots it appears tiny, so I'm sorry but I can't help you out here mate.
Must be something to do with the amount of pixels in the shot?