Adding a watermark to pictures

[Steph_D]

Since the "other" thread got deleted (thank you ML or whoever did the deleting), can we discuss how to add a watermark or copyright to our pictures? I'm wondering what program you use and how you do it with that particular program. Let's keep it clean and hopefully we can all learn something from this

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I use Irfanview. I "drag" a box on the picture, where I want the mark to be. I then click on "edit" and "Add text to picture". From there you can type whatever you want into the box, or you can click on "Append Copyright", "Append Date", or "Append Time" and it will automatically be added. Leave the "Text is Transparent" box checked and click on "Choose Font" to change the actual text color and size, etc. It's pretty easy.

 

[Firefall]

I'm wondering the same, if you add your own mark, it still could be edited out. So how can you really be safe with your pictures?

 

[hrselady]

Steph, I just downloaded and tried your program and thats about the easiest I've seen. I really like it. I hate to say it, but I'm gonna start copyrighting all my pics.. but my question is the same, what keeps them from editing it out.

 

[Shari]

I have been doing what Steph shows above. I do not think there is a 100% way of keeping someone from Poaching ones pictures.

Doing what Steph does, along with posting at a low resulation will help.

Or you can get a good watermark program. There are some free ones out there..sadly none of them work with Vista at this point.

 

[Steph_D]

I'm not sure what would actually keep them from editing that out. Maybe Jenn can fill us in on that one?

I guess if they have enough time to edit out the watermark, they should really get a life

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[minimule]

There are actually programs out there that you can get that will not allow a photo to be copied at all. Equusite uses it on the photos that do not have permission for others to use. You can right click on it all day and you can't copy it.

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[Marty]

Yes that's what I am interested in; having my website photos locked down. A lot of websites have it and when someone tries to poach it, a box will come up and say something like "oh no you don't" or "this pic belongs to etc"

I'm going to ask Jenn & Caitie my webmasters to do that for me if possible asap

Also, photobucket people can go to "your account" and be sure all your pics there are "private"

 

[Triggy&Blue&Daisy Too]

Sorry all you have to do is press the printscreen key, open a word processor document and click paste. You get the entire page but can easily crop it out.

As for copy rights you are not even protected there as under fair use “criticism” as well as the old stand by “education” can be used to poach your pics. That is one of the main reasons why internet prosecution is so ineffective. I’m sure some of you recall a certain person who brought suit against this board and individual members? One of the issues contended was for copyright. In the end, it was yet another case dismissed, which is the usual end to these things leaving the plaintiff holding the bag for all the legal/court fees.

Frustrating as it is there are no fool proof ways to protect your pics if someone wants them bad enough.

 

[Jenn]

Unfortunately, there is no fail safe way to prevent people from stealing your photos, just deterrents. The no-right-click code is annoying but not fool proof (it usually takes me about 30 seconds to read someone's website code and then I'm able to take whatever I want from it, if I was so inclined. Just out of curiosity one day I cracked a "high-security" photographer's website's code and successfully extracted their photos - not to use them, just to see if I could. Because I'm odd like that.).

Even with flash websites, which is the route many professional photographers are taking these days, someone can do a print screen and crop the photo out.

An attractive, but effective copyright on the picture is about the best deterrent. It is just too time consuming to edit out a watermark (well, at least for the average person) and the result will never be as good as the original picture.

These days, I'm usually using a watermark like this one - it goes across the whole picture. I still haven't finalized my watermark design so this changes with each shoot, it seems.