Watermarking, worth doing? how do you do it?

[soundbyte]

Is watermarking worth doing?
I watermark but understand that the way I do it can be easily cropped out.
I use a font Opendyslexic do be a bit different and have the text in colour and between 20% - 40% opaque.

How do you go about watermarking?
I use Xconvert;- https://www.xnview.com/en/xnconvert/
There must lots of other software to do so?


Other options such as Steganography?
I have used this option but I have had problems with webs sites changing the file enough during loading by rthe web site re-encoding jpg files which disables any steganographic encoding in the original file.
Some examples for Steganography.
OpenPuff;- https://www.embeddedsw.net/OpenPuff_Steganography_Home.html
Open Steganography;- https://www.openstego.com/
Xiao Steganography;- https://xiao-steganography.en.uptodown.com/windows/download

Any other ideas that may come in useful for marking your files, what do you use, how do you the encryption/encoding and why?

Please give examples and download location for the software.

Not bother? Why?

Example of two watermarking text options I use, bottom right hand corner.

You can only see EXIF info for this image if you are logged in.

 

[DRwyoming]

How do you go about watermarking?

I generally watermark in Photoshop. I enter text, run an emboss filter on it (have to rasterize the text), then put it in an Overlay or Soft Light blending mode and tune down the opacity to taste. I used to have actions for this for web sized images both Portrait and Landscape orientation but it only takes a few mouse clicks to do it by hand.

Whether it's really of any value is debatable since as you say I typically place the water mark low in the frame where it's easy to crop out. When I did event and portrait work I'd water mark proofs with a large water mark that was faded down but crossed the main image after a number of potential clients just posted the jpeg proofs on their social media pages and never actually bought prints or high res images.

 

[Steve]

I honestly don't watermark very often. Like DR, I tend to put my watermarks in the corners / bottom so they don't take too much away from the image. And of course, as he says, it's easy to crop / clone out.

I embed copyright info in the image and feel like that can help, but the truth is if someone wants to steal your photo, there's very little you can do about it. Even right-click protection on a website doesn't work since anyone can take a screen shot. I could put the watermark across the entire image diagonally, but it ruins the shot. So, if I watermark an image, it's more for name recognition than protection.

If you really want to protect images, you need to register them with the copyright office. If someone steals it then, you can actually get somewhere. (Technically, images are copyrighted the moment you capture them, however, without copyright registration it's tough to sue and get enough to pay for legal fees. With a registered image, you can sue for both the infringement and legal fees).

 

[Promapper]

I honestly don't watermark very often. Like DR, I tend to put my watermarks in the corners / bottom so they don't take too much away from the image. And of course, as he says, it's easy to crop / clone out.

I embed copyright info in the image and feel like that can help, but the truth is if someone wants to steal your photo, there's very little you can do about it. Even right-click protection on a website doesn't work since anyone can take a screen shot. I could put the watermark across the entire image diagonally, but it ruins the shot. So, if I watermark an image, it's more for name recognition than protection.

If you really want to protect images, you need to register them with the copyright office. If someone steals it then, you can actually get somewhere. (Technically, images are copyrighted the moment you capture them, however, without copyright registration it's tough to sue and get enough to pay for legal fees. With a registered image, you can sue for both the infringement and legal fees).

Steve, At one time you could register an image for copyright by using a contact print or a large group of images and thus protect them all. Do you know if that is still the case with digitla images? If so then that may be a reasonable solution for others as well?

 

[Steve]

Steve, At one time you could register an image for copyright by using a contact print or a large group of images and thus protect them all. Do you know if that is still the case with digitla images? If so then that may be a reasonable solution for others as well?

I know you can register large groups of images at once, it's something I'm still looking into. There's also published / non-published criteria when you first register so I have to figure out which images were published, when, and where before I can actually try a submission. I'll get there eventually and I'll probably do a video to document the procedure

 

[Promapper]

I'm sure I speak for all your followers in saying we appreciate your sharing all of that knowledge you have accumulated. Thank You.

 

[Craig McGowan]

I use Lightroom and it has its own watermark text and graphic editor. I have found this to be very functional.

I use to watermark my images but no longer do this as has already been identified on the thread by Steve, it is easy to crop or clone watermarks out.

So currently I continue to add copyright data to the files at time of capture, plus limit file size and pixel count to anything I upload to the web.