Watermarking?

Joe94

Joe94

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Joe
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Evening all,

As a hobbiest watermarking my images isn’t something I have really thought about, but it seems to be something many people do & many don’t... Apart from if your a business selling images, to which I can then see why you definitely would; as a hobbiest what are the pros & cons of doing it?
 
Joe94 said:
Evening all,

As a hobbiest watermarking my images isn’t something I have really thought about, but it seems to be something many people do & many don’t... Apart from if your a business selling images, to which I can then see why you definitely would; as a hobbiest what are the pros & cons of doing it?
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If you don't care about your image being used in some low life blog then there is not much point. You can still get at them by legal means and many will in fact clone out or crop out watermark anyway unless its so big and central that it looks awful. You will want it if you sell event photos, where un-marked image would be enough for FB and insta losing you a sale.

For display it almost always looks better without unless you are willing to put in the effort. There are ways and means to integrate the watermark into many images individually that it basically becomes a part of artwork. That's quite time consuming and may require substantial technical expertise. A simple example would be to replace billboard text or taxi advert with your logo, etc.
 
LongLensPhotography said:
If you don't care about your image being used in some low life blog then there is not much point. You can still get at them by legal means and many will in fact clone out or crop out watermark anyway unless its so big and central that it looks awful. You will want it if you sell event photos, where un-marked image would be enough for FB and insta losing you a sale.

For display it almost always looks better without unless you are willing to put in the effort. There are ways and means to integrate the watermark into many images individually that it basically becomes a part of artwork. That's quite time consuming and may require substantial technical expertise. A simple example would be to replace billboard text or taxi advert with your logo, etc.
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Thank you. Tbh that is about all I do with my images is share them on social & also if I’m honest I do them, because I want to share them and of cause any personal family images for example then I wouldn’t post anyways.

You mentioned about the cloning/removal of marks and actually that is something I did think that surelly nowadays with the tech & software available doing such thing is easier to do now anyways, hence making watermarking less effective, unless as you spend ages making one that is hard to remove without affecting the image of one that just makes the image look ugly anyways!

In that case I think I will leave doing one and just enjoy sharing my images as they are :) Besides if someone was to create a copy of one of my images I’d take it as a compliment haha

Many thanks for your advice, very much appreciated.
 
As the very least, ensure your data is embedded in the metadata attached to the image.

If you put an image online, its open to abuse. Some people have taken other peoples photos and set themselves up in business on the back of them, which is OK until they have to deliver images to their clients, by which time they've taken and spent deposits.

Otherwise people with plenty of cash to buy images just steal yours and earn money using your images. Wouldn't a better compliment be a couple of quid coming your way?
 
I’m not sure about watermarks, especially as a hobbyist. I used to apply them on export from lightroom but I don’t anymore. I can see why pros who sell their photos have them but I kind of see them more as a way to market a website or the like. Let’s be honest those who copy the images online will either crop out the water mark or not actually care they are there and still use it warm marks and all. The best way to protect your images is to never put them online in the first place. The next is only putting up low res image with metadata.

I’ve had a few images nabbed from online before that had water marks. They just cropped them out. I had one appear on a hunting website in the US with a bible quote over the top. I asked them to remove it because I didn’t want it associated with hunting (I didnt tell them that). Initially got a ‘but we love it’ response. After saying that nice to hear but you should still ask first I just got a load of abuse back, but they did take it down after a bit of ranting and call me some interesting names. It was an interesting introduction into Americans, religion and guns!
 
Thank you very much for all you replies, all very much appreciated.

A think as you all say that at the end of the day if someone is going to take and image they will, whatever you do. I do appreciate the tip about embedding some extra dada into the metadata as at least then it doesn’t imprint on the actual image.

But then again at the end of the day I’m just a hobbiest & as sirch has kind of said about if anyone does want to use an image i would take it as a compliment haha
 
This thread could be of interest to you.

www.talkphotography.co.uk

Watermark removers

Are there any about that actually work.. I am investigating the possibility of people removing mine.. its quite a big nasty ugly one for a reason :) But wondered if it could be removed..... Tried a couple of online ones.. pathetic :)
www.talkphotography.co.uk www.talkphotography.co.uk
 
rob-nikon said:
This thread could be of interest to you.

www.talkphotography.co.uk

Watermark removers

Are there any about that actually work.. I am investigating the possibility of people removing mine.. its quite a big nasty ugly one for a reason :) But wondered if it could be removed..... Tried a couple of online ones.. pathetic :)
www.talkphotography.co.uk www.talkphotography.co.uk
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Thank you, I was reading this earlier actually & was interesting to read but shows that there are of course ways around watermarking. I think I have come to the conclusion that unless you are pro selling images etc. And have proper legal backup to your images, in this day where open sharing of images is so open, a watermark is just a mark to relate to the photography and not and insurance policy against use of it & so it questions whether it’s worth doing it..

If I’m coming from a personal view for my images, following this discussion, I don’t think I will bother as tbh if I share an image it’s to be shared with people & again If I found my images had been used somewhere I would use it as a compliment aha as for me, my photography is a fun hobbie & not a serious matter :)

I also understand & appreciate if what I have said above dosnt sit in the view of other, but this is just my personal conclusions following the conversation from my original post :)
 
when I first started out one of my client's went to the effort of downloading photoshop and learning to use the clone tool to get rid of my watermark. He could have had it if he'd asked.

unless your watermark is so ugly it ruins the photo they need to be thought of as just branding
 
rob-nikon said:
I think you’re right, branding makes much more sense as it shows who took it and gets their name out there.
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Possibly then maybe as a hobbiest it’s worth adding a small brand mark, essentially your name, so as you say it just showing you as the photographer, but not stamping the image with a full blown watermark in the hope of protection against your photos as we have established they don’t work.

So yeah just a small name mark, just to show you as the photographer maybe the way forward :)
 
I never post an image I really care about so theft is not a concern. However, I will add my name to an Image in case anyone is interested in who produced it.
 
john.margetts said:
I never post an image I really care about so theft is not a concern. However, I will add my name to an Image in case anyone is interested in who produced it.
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That’s a good point actually, I too would never post and image that was personal too me. But it does seem to be adding a name rather than a full blown watermark is a good idea.
 
john.margetts said:
However, I will add my name to an Image in case anyone is interested in who produced it.
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How many of you got a sale because of the watermark?
 
LongLensPhotography said:
How many of you got a sale because of the watermark?
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If your a hobbyists it’s probably not for the purpose of sales but get their name out there. I kind of see watermarks for hobbyists as the equivalent of a photo credit rather than stopping image theft. Most hobbyists likely don’t care about getting a sale or about theft either, but likely like the name in ‘shiny bright lights’ sort of thing as an ego massage (that probably sounds a bit harsh, it wasn’t meant to).
 
LongLensPhotography said:
How many of you got a sale because of the watermark?
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Not everything is about sales. I do a lot of insect photography and several of my photos are being used on ID sites.
 
Yeah I agree now after creating this post and reading all your kind replies that, for me it certainly isn’t about making sales! I don’t do photography for that, I do it because I enjoy it and it’s a hobby, so yeah I suppose if I was to use a small signature mark it would just be to say ‘hey I took this my sort of thing, but friendly and nothing with intent :)
 
i use my business name for a watermark rather than my real name. i work in dispatch, i'm a little paranoid about my personal info on the internet. my coworkers at my dispatch job know the name and logo of my photography business. one of them told me one day that they'd seen one of my photos had been featured on a local news outlet, they picked it up from a fb group for local stuff who got it from god knows where. my coworker recognized the logo even though my name wasn't mentioned.
 
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