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|| SportsShooter.com: Member Message Board
Most effective watermark
Marty Price, Photographer
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Concord | NC | USA | Posted: 12:10 PM on 03.11.08 |
| ->> I am trying to decide on which type of watermark to use on my images for sale on the web. I have read about watermarking and that they can be removed as well. Is it harder to remove opaic type or the clear rippled effect type? I would also like to hear about pros and cons of Paypal Vs a merchant account. Thanks, Marty |
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Greg Ferguson, Photographer
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Scottsdale | Az | USA | Posted: 3:04 PM on 03.11.08 |
->> There are watermarks that are encoded into the image in a way that they don't visually change it a lot. Those can be removed by software.
To me, a more protective watermark is visually obvious and can't be easily removed. Copyright notices that conform to the law and are embedded in the image are sufficient legally, but on larger sized proofs online I often put "proof" or something similar across the image too to discourage printing and reduce the chance of someone cropping out the copyright notice and still having an image they'd want to display.
Usually I'd make a pure white mark more transparent to allow the original image to come through rather than completely obscure it. I also have some grayscale versions that I apply using Photoshop as "overlay" so they look embossed.
We've all got our particular favorites, but what's important is that you do something visual in the image to show it's copyrighted. The invisible embedded watermarks are used for tracking the image across the internet via software but do nothing for the common internet surfers as far as showing your legal ownership of the image.
Oh, according to copyright law and emphasized by my IP lawyer, the copyright MUST be either the copyright symbol of the "C" in a circle, the word "Copyright" or its abbreviation "Copyr.", the year of initial publishing and the name of the copyrighting entity or person. A "C" inside parenthesis "(C)" is not correct. Remember, this is a legal notice. |
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Marty Price, Photographer
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Concord | NC | USA | Posted: 3:29 PM on 03.11.08 |
->> Greg,
Thanks for the info (on copyright as well). I was thinking white or gray type. Once I work this into my work flow things should get easier. Marty |
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Darren Whitley, Photographer
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Maryville | MO | USA | Posted: 3:34 PM on 03.11.08 |
->> Marty,
I usually set the fill property of the typography to 30 percent and add a drop shadow. The drop shadow adds a second element making it even more difficult to remove the watermark. I do all this as an action in Photoshop. |
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Dominick Reuter, Student/Intern, Photographer
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Boston | MA | USA | Posted: 4:08 PM on 03.11.08 |
->> Super easy is the Save As... feature of Photo Mechanic. In one fell swoop it will resize and watermark photos for web or elsewhere. I use it when sending photos to my blog, since I can't lock them down like in photoshelter.
- DR |
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Marty Price, Photographer
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Concord | NC | USA | Posted: 4:22 PM on 03.11.08 |
| ->> Darren- thanks for the pointer, didn't think of second element. Dominick- are you saying that you don't watermark for photoshelter because you can lock them down? How do you lock them down? Thanks everyone! Marty |
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Michael Myers, Photographer, Student/Intern
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Miami Beach | FL | USA | Posted: 6:33 PM on 03.11.08 |
->> Right now I'm using the "automate image gallery" option in Photoshop, which adds the copyright notice along with resizing the images. The option I picked was to create a "flash gallery" which produces something that most people find very hard to copy.
Unfortunately, there are only two choices for the gallery. I'd like to make the image size larger, and put the image selection stuff (thumbnails, etc.) at the right side of the main image, not under it. Anyone know a way to do this?
In the meantime, people pretty much stopped posting my images once I switched to displaying them in a Flash gallery. |
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Dominick Reuter, Student/Intern, Photographer
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Boston | MA | USA | Posted: 6:35 PM on 03.11.08 |
->> Photoshelter is perfectly secure for displaying all images, so I don't bother marking anything since that will mess with prints and image files. For photoshelter, the software will generate a temporary watermark for display images only, which will be removed on the purchased image. I use watermarks via PM when I am putting the images somewhere where they are not secure, i.e. not on PS or SS. PM also lets you add a drop shadow to the watermark like what Darren was saying. That seems to be the most time-efficient way for me.
- DR |
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Marty Price, Photographer
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Concord | NC | USA | Posted: 8:44 PM on 03.11.08 |
| ->> That makes sense. Just use their (photoshelter) watermark feature and it only sits on the gallery image not the archived images. I guess that is what I will do. Thanks for all the advice guys. I am an old dog learning new tricks so I apologize if my questions have been asked before. Marty |
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Greg Ferguson, Photographer
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Scottsdale | Az | USA | Posted: 11:05 AM on 03.12.08 |
->> Lightroom, and probably Aperture, can also quickly add watermarks/copyright notices to images when you save for the web.
There are many 3rd party apps that can do it, along with some that ONLY do watermarks, making it easy to dump a folder of images on them just before uploading.
Personally, I use a skanky hack on Lightroom along with a custom LUA script and XML template, but that's how I roll. |
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Greg Ferguson, Photographer
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Scottsdale | Az | USA | Posted: 11:08 AM on 03.12.08 |
->> Oh, the suggestions to use Flash reminded me...
Monoslideshow (the Flash slideshow software) makes it easy to do that. You can build a small Flash image that will get overlaid on all other images displayed in the Flash gallery. I use that on my opening page on my website and it works really nicely.
http://eightsecondimagery.com |
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Osamu Chiba, Photographer
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Vista | CA | USA | Posted: 1:47 PM on 03.12.08 |
->> I watermark with no transparency, and people still steal... Oh well. Is there a program that can remove watermark with zero transparency?
As for the PayPal vs merchant account question...., well, with all kinds of complaints about PayPal, I've never thought of asking them to handle credit card transactions for my biz. So I have a merchant account (from Bank of America). I think finding the right gateway is more difficult. I am happy with Authorized.net.
O |
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Dave Doonan, Photographer
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Kingston | TN | USA | Posted: 5:41 PM on 03.12.08 |
->> I have a watermark set up in photoshop in my brush palette. I can adjust opacity, color, size and have the ability to put it anywhere on the image.
A good how to is in Scott Kelby's Photoshop CS2 book. |
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