Watermarks
- Thread starter cokecan
- Start date
Cue everyone saying "don't do it" 
I agree with the masses, by the way, though. Watermarking (depending on style, size and placement) can ruin photos, and really the best defence against use is simply to limit resolution. I use a max side of 500px on my site. People can/may use photos from you then, but not for anything particularly useful. A discrete watermark can be removed with comparative ease and little skill nowadays anyway.
I agree with the masses, by the way, though. Watermarking (depending on style, size and placement) can ruin photos, and really the best defence against use is simply to limit resolution. I use a max side of 500px on my site. People can/may use photos from you then, but not for anything particularly useful. A discrete watermark can be removed with comparative ease and little skill nowadays anyway.
Cue everyone saying "don't do it"
I agree with the masses, by the way, though. Watermarking (depending on style, size and placement) can ruin photos, and really the best defence against use is simply to limit resolution. I use a max side of 500px on my site. People can/may use photos from you then, but not for anything particularly useful. A discrete watermark can be removed with comparative ease and little skill nowadays anyway.
Agree entirely but if you insist, Lightroom 3 has improved watermarking with ability to save various versions/colours of your watermark as well as applying images, ,gif etc, as watermarks.
The only effective way to protect your images is to use one of the image tracking services such as Digimarc but they cost.
If you have photos you think have commercial value that people would steal then get them on a commercial stock site and profit. The advantage is that if someone steals an image of yours, the legal team of the stock agency will track down the culprit and get royalties.
Putting a watermark on a photo doesn't stop people stealing, doesn't stop people removing the watermark, and doesn't add any legal protection. If anything, if you put some cheesy watermark saying it is copyright of some fake photography business like "(C) John Smith Photography" then you probably reduce your legal status.
The IPCC datafields of jpegs are perfect for adding copyright and legal information without intruding on the image. Then just upload low resolution photos to your personal webpage and link to the commercial stock portfolio.
Putting a name on the photo may help publicity, but really you should have a nice professional website setup that make it clear who you are and what you do with contact info.
Putting a watermark on a photo doesn't stop people stealing, doesn't stop people removing the watermark, and doesn't add any legal protection. If anything, if you put some cheesy watermark saying it is copyright of some fake photography business like "(C) John Smith Photography" then you probably reduce your legal status.
The IPCC datafields of jpegs are perfect for adding copyright and legal information without intruding on the image. Then just upload low resolution photos to your personal webpage and link to the commercial stock portfolio.
Putting a name on the photo may help publicity, but really you should have a nice professional website setup that make it clear who you are and what you do with contact info.