Photographers & Watermarks

Watermarks can be a Huge debate for photographers…and Sometimes, a huge hindrance for those who steal images off of the net.  I’m not really one to go for the huge markings on my images, I simply figure it’s not that difficult to alter an image and remove a copyright – so I’m not going to destroy the look by plastering marks all over it.  I do know of some photographers however, who’s logo’s actually add to the look of the image…and others, that basically made a great image look cheap by “protecting their image”.  At least one photographer I know of marks their images in a way that I like – Matt Nicolosi – he is creative and fun in how he does it.

There are of course two main reasons why photographers watermark their images 1: Advertising purposes  2: to keep others from copying their images off of the net and reposting it as their own.  Recently a fellow Canadian photographer became aware of one of her images being blatantly used online for advertising by another fauxtographer. 

The photographer who actually took the image was Vancouver Portrait Photographer | Cathy Empey Photographer, a well established and talented Photographer out of British Columbia, Canada.  The image was re posted however by a “fauxtographer” in Atlanta.  Now I’m quite sure the actions are prevalent among “want to be photographers” who simply do not have a portfolio due to lack of work, however – be sure – if you take this route, you will be found out.  In this case – the fauxtographer was actually foolish enough to steal from multiple photographers sites, and or flickr pages, and posted them as her own as advertising.

  In essence, it is almost impossible with today’s imaging tools to stop image theft even with a watermark – plain or elaborate.  (the more elaborate methods will stop those really poor at PS though)   That said however I would like to direct you to a post specifically dedicated to a variety of watermarking methods, as well as encourage you to be sure to set your metadata in your Lightroom or Photoshop settings (as again – those who really don’t know what they are doing, wouldn’t know to check metadata either).  Check out “Creating Safe and Effective Watermarks” at Photoshop Tutorials for more details. 

        

The Winner

Many of you were curious to know the winner of the Turkey & Family Shoot – so here it is…Beth Woods from Forest area became the proud owner of a 15+ kg Turkey this past Christmas Eve, will post her family picture after she sets a date :D  Congratulations Beth!

Walmart & Facebook

Most of us post pictures on facebook.  We share our images with our friends, and love to see our friends images.  For those who are concerned as professional photographers however, you may wish to be aware that Walmart has hooked up with Facebook and now has an add on that allows you,  to print yours, or any of your facebook friends pictures directly from the Walmart site.  There are two options if you are worried about this, one is described in the video below – which is very easily laid out on how to block Walmart from accessing your account.  The other point I would like to make however is to be sure you resize your images prior to uploading to Facebook.  Firstly this will allow you to avoid that L O N G upload time of uploading a full size file.  Secondly, if you resize your image to 800x600 or less, then the print quality that anyone would receive from trying to print your resized images would be pitiful.   In addition, it appears that this is not currently available through Walmart.ca, only at the .com site. 

Latest Business Card