What do you think to watermarks on photos? I think sometimes they're great, but better when they don't interfere with the photo as often a beautiful photo can be ruined by text all over it!
there are a lot of photo thieves out here on the internet. thats why some put watermarks on their photos.
if you dont want your photo to be stolen & printed, make sure you only upload a low resolution file, a 72dpi @ 800pixels is sufficient for web viewing.
Scott Bourne over at Photofocus has post on the topic of watermarks. Trey Ratcliff, HDR Expert and blogger at StuckinCustoms.com is the opposite of Scott. Trey uploads full resolution images to Flickr and licenses them Creative Commons (no derivative works/non-commerical/attribution required) and anyone is free to use them as long as they make no money off of them.
After looking at both sides of this I'm inclined to think that if you are trying to prevent theft, who are you trying to stop? Bloggers have too many free images to choose from to bother taking yours. The people that would steal it for a non-commercial purpose were never going to buy it in the first place and a reputable business doesn't want to take the risk of using an illegal image.
I think if you are going to use the web to market yourself it is going to be hard to do it using watermarks. I'm not saying it can't be done, but I am saying you will make it less likely people will share your image of you watermark it.
*I currently watermark my own images and I am struggling with this issue myself.
I don't mind watermarks as long as they don't overpower the picture ! If we don't want our pics stolen, the Web isn't the place to show them ! A watermark can be cropped out or cloned out ! I'm sometimes disappointed when I see a gorgeous photo on-line and it has a nice, big watermark smack dab in the middle of it ! Ruins the shot ! We'll never stop theft of ANYTHING in this life.....if we could, we wouldn't need keys for our houses and cars ! Use a watermark.....but stick it in a bottom corner ! If you look at a pic and your eye immediately goes to the watermark, you lost the purpose of photography ! Besides....I don't know about you, but I'm no Ansel Adams making millions with my Canon !
I don't do it - my pictures aren't worth stealing... :/ But I don't really mind them, on others' photos, as long as they're done tastefully, and don't detract too much from the original subject of the photograph...
I think that a watermark can make a photo look more professional. That, and a larger size. Not for this site, but on a blog, a larger picture is more eye catching than a small one. But they can ruin the shot too, depending on where the watermark is. It is like you have to customize the watermark for each photo, to be where it won't be in the way, and I am way too lazy for that.
I don't use them because I'm not worried about theft, but if I did (or when I do) I would always place it in the bottom right hand corner. I think it takes away from the whole composition of a photo when it is placed elsewhere in the frame.
@15johnpatrick Unfortunately it takes about 5 seconds to strip all the EXIF data from a photo... most editing problems strip the data if resaved, hell, even photoshop does it if you select "Save for Web." At least this site doesn't strip that data like facebook and other sources do. I like it just to go back and see what exposures and stuff I did on photos.
I watermark. I try to do small, and always in a corner. I have a logo I use, but often I just type mine out in a font that suits my fancy at the moment (usually a pretty script). If I have photos for sale on my site, I embed a watermark across the middle, so if they choose to steal it without paying, they're stuck with the huge watermark.
I actually like them when applied artfully or non-interfering. somehow i feel more proud of my image when my name is on it. I take care where i apply it.
The internet has made it very easy for photographers to market and share their work, and very easy to steal that work. Further, it has created a mindset amongst many users that it's not stealing if it is online - I've actually had people demand I remove watermarks from my work so they can use them, since "you don't own them anymore as you put them online." Strange attitudes, but I do understand how they developed.
I've had images stolen. One of them showed up in the Sydney Morning Herald with a link to the site where one of them ended up! My lovely wife took action and contacted the site, who fortunately were reasonable and removed it (and also apologised for the theft, of which they said they were not aware). That was the moment that prompted me to start watermarking, and I do for about 90% of my work now.
Watermarks can be easy to remove, especially with fantastic tools such as CS5's content aware fill, but a well-designed and placed watermark is not so easy to defeat, and can still be done subtly enough to not interfere (too much) with the viewing of an image.
Generally, I lean towards the more-subtle and less-secure style of watermark, but that's because I've usually made the money from the shot before I share it and, when I haven't, I'm not posting it at a resolution and quality that wil lend itself to printing or full-screen viewing anyway, and certainly not after editing it to remove the watermark. Right now I'm away from home, and am not watermarking my images at all because it is awkward to do well on my (pitiful) laptop screen. My editing also suffers, so I'm not terribly worried about theft of two weeks' work on 365. ;)
Friends of mine have had their work show up on another "photographer's" website portfolio, and I've also seen them show up on forums supposedly about "innocent roleplaying" but seemingly just a veiled place for miscreants to share photos of children for very dubious purposes. Don't think that just because your photos are "snapshots" that people won't steal them! And if you have photos of your kids, consider the possibility of whose hard-drives they could wind up on!
So, yes, I'm very pro-watermarks. My camera pays my bills, but furthermore I don't want more cases of people claiming my work as their own, whether amateur, supposedly professional, or some weirdo trading photos with other weirdos.
There is no right or wrong to this debate - it is just to each to decide what they need to do, and often on an individual image basis.
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if you dont want your photo to be stolen & printed, make sure you only upload a low resolution file, a 72dpi @ 800pixels is sufficient for web viewing.
After looking at both sides of this I'm inclined to think that if you are trying to prevent theft, who are you trying to stop? Bloggers have too many free images to choose from to bother taking yours. The people that would steal it for a non-commercial purpose were never going to buy it in the first place and a reputable business doesn't want to take the risk of using an illegal image.
I think if you are going to use the web to market yourself it is going to be hard to do it using watermarks. I'm not saying it can't be done, but I am saying you will make it less likely people will share your image of you watermark it.
*I currently watermark my own images and I am struggling with this issue myself.
MY EYES HURT
:)
http://365project.org/steveh/365/2010-05-11
I watermark. I try to do small, and always in a corner. I have a logo I use, but often I just type mine out in a font that suits my fancy at the moment (usually a pretty script). If I have photos for sale on my site, I embed a watermark across the middle, so if they choose to steal it without paying, they're stuck with the huge watermark.
I've had images stolen. One of them showed up in the Sydney Morning Herald with a link to the site where one of them ended up! My lovely wife took action and contacted the site, who fortunately were reasonable and removed it (and also apologised for the theft, of which they said they were not aware). That was the moment that prompted me to start watermarking, and I do for about 90% of my work now.
Watermarks can be easy to remove, especially with fantastic tools such as CS5's content aware fill, but a well-designed and placed watermark is not so easy to defeat, and can still be done subtly enough to not interfere (too much) with the viewing of an image.
Generally, I lean towards the more-subtle and less-secure style of watermark, but that's because I've usually made the money from the shot before I share it and, when I haven't, I'm not posting it at a resolution and quality that wil lend itself to printing or full-screen viewing anyway, and certainly not after editing it to remove the watermark. Right now I'm away from home, and am not watermarking my images at all because it is awkward to do well on my (pitiful) laptop screen. My editing also suffers, so I'm not terribly worried about theft of two weeks' work on 365. ;)
Friends of mine have had their work show up on another "photographer's" website portfolio, and I've also seen them show up on forums supposedly about "innocent roleplaying" but seemingly just a veiled place for miscreants to share photos of children for very dubious purposes. Don't think that just because your photos are "snapshots" that people won't steal them! And if you have photos of your kids, consider the possibility of whose hard-drives they could wind up on!
So, yes, I'm very pro-watermarks. My camera pays my bills, but furthermore I don't want more cases of people claiming my work as their own, whether amateur, supposedly professional, or some weirdo trading photos with other weirdos.
There is no right or wrong to this debate - it is just to each to decide what they need to do, and often on an individual image basis.