Made a watermark..

SdoowSirhc

I've just started posting photographs online recently and somebody suggested that I get a watermark to keep them from being stolen. TBH, I would love if somebody used my photographs but I would like if they at least asked first.

I used GIMP 2.6 to make the watermark. I was wondering if you guys had a better free program for watermarking. Also I would like to know what you think of the watermark.

Thanks

frozenfrozen

Looks good. All I do for my watermarks is just automate in photoshop. There's a similar option in lightroom, but I don't know of any free alternatives. Are you putting the watermark on one by one? Once I set the script going I can get through a folder of 200 images in a few minutes, and that includes resizing, saving as jpeg and then watermarking 5pixels in on each side from the bottom right corner of each image. Saves so much time!

nmccann

Hi Guys, We operate a site selling knitting wool called the wool shop. I am frustrated with competitors stealing our pictures and have spoke on the Joe Duffy show about this.

We are applying a number of defences on the site. However I do not want to put watermarks on the images and their prime task is to sell the product.

We need to change the view of copyright theft as not a real crime.

SdoowSirhc

nmccann wrote: »

Hi Guys, We operate a site selling knitting wool called the wool shop. I am frustrated with competitors stealing our pictures and have spoke on the Joe Duffy show about this.

We are applying a number of defences on the site. However I do not want to put watermarks on the images and their prime task is to sell the product.

We need to change the view of copyright theft as not a real crime.

Not too much you can do with markings of some kind really. Do you photograph your products on white background? How about you print your logo or name on the background behind the wool? Sorry, I don't know anything about product photography :P

SdoowSirhc

frozenfrozen wrote: »

Looks good. All I do for my watermarks is just automate in photoshop. There's a similar option in lightroom, but I don't know of any free alternatives. Are you putting the watermark on one by one? Once I set the script going I can get through a folder of 200 images in a few minutes, and that includes resizing, saving as jpeg and then watermarking 5pixels in on each side from the bottom right corner of each image. Saves so much time!

I have it saved as a .gbr file with a transparent background and I open it as a layer with each photo! Not too slow but still a real pain!

frozenfrozen

nmccann wrote: »

Hi Guys, We operate a site selling knitting wool called the wool shop. I am frustrated with competitors stealing our pictures and have spoke on the Joe Duffy show about this.

We are applying a number of defences on the site. However I do not want to put watermarks on the images and their prime task is to sell the product.

We need to change the view of copyright theft as not a real crime.

Include your branding in the pictures, upload the picture in the largest size YOU will use, don't put up full sized ones for people to steal. Run a 5% opacity watermark over the whole image, it's barely visible, and means nobody else will use it. Disabling right clicking on your website is a deterrent for stupid people, in case your competition don't know how to get past this block.
I heard the show the other day. The misconception that it's copyright infringement and not theft needs to be stamped out. The people are claiming ownership by not giving credit or seeking the use of the image. A great business opportunity for someone would be to set up a website that easily allows people to sell their images for use. If there is one out there the people who own it aren't doing a good job about marketing it.

SdoowSirhc wrote: »

I have it saved as a .gbr file with a transparent background and I open it as a layer with each photo! Not too slow but still a real pain!

Yeah that's what I did with photoshop before I discovered automation, your way isn't too slow but the way I do it means I can walk away while it's doing it

SdoowSirhc

frozenfrozen wrote: »

Yeah that's what I did with photoshop before I discovered automation, your way isn't too slow but the way I do it means I can walk away while it's doing it

Photoshop would be amazing but I'm really doing photography on an extreme budget, that means no paying for software, no buying more SD cards and no buying tripods or even bags... Wanna sponsor me? :P I hope to get a DSLR in the coming year as well...

jonniebgood1

I understand why some people put watermarks on photos but having noted this I really dislike them for a couple of reasons.

Firstly they dont work anyway. If someone want to steal the photo they can just edit it out if they want.

Secondly I think they really devalue a beautiful photo. People spend alot of time trying to achieve excellence in their photos and then plonk a set of text on top of the photograph. It detracts from the photo in all cases and to me this is the most important point.

Both points are perfectly illustrated by the OP photos. A simple black fill in photoshop would take 2 minutes for someone who wants to steal one of the photos. Yet when the person who actually takes the photo puts it on view they put a distracting text on it. They are good photos IMO but ruined by the watermark.

frozenfrozen

SdoowSirhc wrote: »

Photoshop would be amazing but I'm really doing photography on an extreme budget, that means no paying for software, no buying more SD cards and no buying tripods or even bags... Wanna sponsor me? :P I hope to get a DSLR in the coming year as well...

I would love to but...................... http://members.ozemail.com.au/~hodsond/dbp.html should help you do it with gimp!

SdoowSirhc

jonniebgood1 wrote: »

I understand why some people put watermarks on photos but having noted this I really dislike them for a couple of reasons.

Firstly they dont work anyway. If someone want to steal the photo they can just edit it out if they want.

Secondly I think they really devalue a beautiful photo. People spend alot of time trying to achieve excellence in their photos and then plonk a set of text on top of the photograph. It detracts from the photo in all cases and to me this is the most important point.

Both points are perfectly illustrated by the OP photos. A simple black fill in photoshop would take 2 minutes for someone who wants to steal one of the photos. Yet when the person who actually takes the photo puts it on view they put a distracting text on it. They are good photos IMO but ruined by the watermark.

Yes, sadly watermarks of the nature I used are irrelevant really. I don't worry about ruining my photographs though, I did this to just about 20 photographs to see what it would be like but I also kept originals without the marks

nmccann

In my view the issue is not the watermark its punishing the thieves.

frozenfrozen

i watermark all my work that goes on facebook, so basically all the pictures I don't really care about. It means that when a band share an album, everyone sees who took their pictures. But for actual photography (I wanted to put photography in quotes but someone would kill me for it) I agree it is distracting. Product photography is a hard one. People don't care who took the picture, they want to see the product being shown. A white backdrop with the companies logo on it seems to be the best of both worlds for this. People see the product, and if someone takes the picture, it's filled with the owners name, unobtrusively.


It doesn't matter how good your watermark is though. If someone wants the picture enough they will spend the extra couple of hours MAX removing even the largest watermark.

SdoowSirhc

frozenfrozen wrote: »

It doesn't matter how good your watermark is though. If someone wants the picture enough they will spend the extra couple of hours MAX removing even the largest watermark.

Yeah, true. I really only wanted one 'cos it looked professional But shhhhhhhh! Don't tell anybody. And I wanted some more traffic to my Pix.ie page so I included that so ye boardies might take a look. So d'ya mind taken a look at it? :P

frozenfrozen

SdoowSirhc wrote: »

Yeah, true. I really only wanted one 'cos it looked professional But shhhhhhhh! Don't tell anybody. And I wanted some more traffic to my Pix.ie page so I included that so ye boardies might take a look. So d'ya mind taken a look at it? :P

Stick the link in your signature, you would be surprised how many clicks you get from that too!

SdoowSirhc

frozenfrozen wrote: »

Stick the link in your signature, you would be surprised how many clicks you get from that too!

Wanna enlighten me as to how?

frozenfrozen

Hover over your username on the top right, click "edit your profile", then click edit signature, then paste in the box


to get the pix.ie widget, go to http://pix.ie/widgets/create then get the code from there

ScumLord

SdoowSirhc wrote: »

I've just started posting photographs online recently and somebody suggested that I get a watermark to keep them from being stolen.

Watermarks won't stop your photos from being stolen. There's really very little that will if you put them online.

I think you just have to do a routine search for your work every so often. Use google image search, look at the traffic on your photos to see who's using them where. If the pictures are just being republished by someone saying "look at this cool photo" there's not much of a problem.

nmccann wrote: »

Hi Guys, We operate a site selling knitting wool called the wool shop. I am frustrated with competitors stealing our pictures and have spoke on the Joe Duffy show about this.

We are applying a number of defences on the site. However I do not want to put watermarks on the images and their prime task is to sell the product.

We need to change the view of copyright theft as not a real crime.

I think courts need to start to get tough on copyright issues because at this stage in the game it's obvious people know exactly what their doing when they misuse others pictures. Set up google alerts for your line of business so you know what's going on out there. Maybe get a solicitor to write up a letter that you can send to any offenders you find. If it's a business I'd charge them money and look for damages, I don't think it's good enough that they can take down the image, steel someone else's image and carry on as if nothing happened.

You'd want to be careful restricting your site as well. You don't want to make it a pain to use because most of the ways used to stop people steeling photos have many work arounds.

SdoowSirhc

ScumLord wrote: »

Watermarks won't stop your photos from being stolen. There's really very little that will if you put them online.

I think you just have to do a routine search for your work every so often. Use google image search, look at the traffic on your photos to see who's using them where. If the pictures are just being republished by someone saying "look at this cool photo" there's not much of a problem.

I really have no problem with people sharing, I would actually like people to get my work moving around the net. But I don't want people to claim my work as their own, but even a watermark won't do that if somebody is actually trying to steal photographs. Well I haven't ever even tried to make money from taking photographs so using my photographs isn't gonna do any damage.

Light Image Resizer is a great programme that allows you to choose a watermark from your PC (mine is a PNG.), select where you want it (top left, bottom right, centre, etc.) and bulk resize photos/apply watermark.

Takes about 10 seconds to do a million photos* and it works grand. It's what I've been using lately;




As for the Watermark VS No Watermark debate, as a professional photographer, I know that nobody will ever buy a photograph of a Garda car off me. It's just one of those things that will never, ever happen. My reason for watermarking photos like that, is because I have an interest in the emergency services and, there I say it, actually enjoy photographing their stuff, and through people seeing my name on such photos, I've managed to get in touch with a few people in the services (some of whom I'd almost consider friend at this stage) and I'm usually getting updates on what the different services are up to and such, and getting opportunities to photograph their equipment, which may sound silly, but i enjoy it and appreciate them (the officers of the varying services) contacting me.


I also watermark because with other work (most notably family portraits and to a lesser extent, events) people see the name and if they like the photo/s, they get in touch from that. It also means that, for journalistic stuff, newspapers won't steal the photos, for example (as I've altered my watermark recently, as above, so it takes up more space in the image, but it's opacity is low enough that it doesn't destroy the image, in my opinion).

Putting up stuff without the watermark is fine, if you just want to share you work, but for me personally, I opt to watermark the majority of my stuff these days.


*may be a slight exaggeration

SdoowSirhc

Deleted User wrote: »

Light Image Resizer is a great programme that allows you to choose a watermark from your PC (mine is a PNG.), select where you want it (top left, bottom right, centre, etc.) and bulk resize photos/apply watermark.

Takes about 10 seconds to do a million photos* and it works grand. It's what I've been using lately;




As for the Watermark VS No Watermark debate, as a professional photographer, I know that nobody will ever buy a photograph of a Garda car off me. It's just one of those things that will never, ever happen. My reason for watermarking photos like that, is because I have an interest in the emergency services and, there I say it, actually enjoy photographing their stuff, and through people seeing my name on such photos, I've managed to get in touch with a few people in the services (some of whom I'd almost consider friend at this stage) and I'm usually getting updates on what the different services are up to and such, and getting opportunities to photograph their equipment, which may sound silly, but i enjoy it and appreciate them (the officers of the varying services) contacting me.


I also watermark because with other work (most notably family portraits and to a lesser extent, events) people see the name and if they like the photo/s, they get in touch from that. It also means that, for journalistic stuff, newspapers won't steal the photos, for example (as I've altered my watermark recently, as above, so it takes up more space in the image, but it's opacity is low enough that it doesn't destroy the image, in my opinion).

Putting up stuff without the watermark is fine, if you just want to share you work, but for me personally, I opt to watermark the majority of my stuff these days.


*may be a slight exaggeration

Thanks, is that a free program?
I get what you mean with the emergency services stuff. Sometimes it's nice to just take time to take photographs of subjects you enjoy yourself, even if others think you're a bit mad because of it.

I enjoy taken "abstract" photographs (probably not the correct term of abstract, maybe "artistic" is a better word) E.g;

I'm not sure if it's free or not actually.. hmm.. I think you've to pay for it, but if you like their facebook page they give you a free serial code..?

Reoil

I could remove those watermarks in 3 seconds in photoshop.

You're better off using a watermark like this, albeit more discreet:
http://www.pacemakerpressintl.com/photo?id=326720

SdoowSirhc

Reoil wrote: »

I could remove those watermarks in 3 seconds in photoshop.

You're better off using a watermark like this, albeit more discreet:
http://www.pacemakerpressintl.com/photo?id=326720

Yeah I know :rolleyes: I don't need one anyway

Reoil

SdoowSirhc wrote: »

Yeah I know :rolleyes: I don't need one anyway

...sorry?

SdoowSirhc

Reoil wrote: »

...sorry?

I got the`whole watermark situation under control :cool:

ScumLord

All those watermarks ruin the photos though. In my opinion anyway.

SdoowSirhc

ScumLord wrote: »

All those watermarks ruin the photos though. In my opinion anyway.

I agree. I'm just keeping a watermarked version of a few pics that I've already done.

melekalikimaka

just post low res online, watermarks really ruin photos for me, can't stand them, if people want the photos, they will take them full stop, watermarks are pretty poor deteerents, a wee blurb stating you're legal course of action might put off photo pikies a bit better