Do I need to watermark images?

cambsno

cambsno

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Simon
Edit My Images
Yes
I will be posting some images on my website. I was going to watermark them but noticed that the watermark really does affect the look of the image.

I then tried to save images off my site, but the best I got was an 8kb image which was ok at a couple of cm in size but useless after. So do I need to actually watermark. Obviously, I dont want the parents to just download or save as the image and not buy from me!!!

My gallery is on - www.simonowensphotography.co.uk
 
My point is that I dont think that people can get the images from my site (other than an 8kb file which is hardly going to be any sort of resolution once it gets bigger than a postage stamp!). I may be wrong though, and would prefer not to watermark, so if someone can see if they can download a decent image from the gallery page only, I would appreciate it.
 
I watermark and stop people right clicking on my site. Again because of family. I booked a studio for two hours recently and my girlfriend was going to model for us, after being in a car accident the night before she didn't feel the best so i asked my cousin to come along as a model aswell, i said i would get a print and frame it for her to say thanks and she said ok. Then a couple of days later she is demanding the originals off me, I refused and said she could have edited pics with my logo on she said no there my pics of me so there my photos so the argument broke out about copyright. Never work or do work for family lmao!!!
 
Can anyone download pics from my gallery? If they cant, then no need to watermark.
 
cambsno said:
Can anyone download pics from my gallery? If they cant, then no need to watermark.
Click to expand...

You can always download pics from a site and stopping the right click may stop a few people but there are some browsers (or there used to be) which disabled the "stop right click" option - I believe Opera was one such.

Or you can simply use a screen grabber like "Screen Hunter" which can grab a picture right off the screen.

So using a big watermark will protect your images but, as has been said, also spoils the image.

No easy answer I'm afraid.
 
You see, I spent a few minutes trying to download one and got nowhere so assume that most people wont/cant.
 
cambsno said:
Can anyone download pics from my gallery? If they cant, then no need to watermark.
Click to expand...

Yep, I can download them all. e.g. the first photo of the woman in blue holding up the baby is Colour-8.jpg (JPEG Picture, 122 KB). Dimensions are 800px × 800px.

Personally, I watermark and people have still used my work thinking it gives me some credit which it does, but I'd prefer to be asked and be paid!
 
Poo. That also means I am thick as I couldnt!!!! Will have to watermark then. Thanks for the help!
 
ahhh - just to clarify, I can download the little images on your homepage, if I go into the gallery, I can only do screengrabs, BUT they're big enough to get and copy, and get a 6x4 print from snapfish or somewhere, scan them and print to a4 (something I unfortunately know certain people would do).
 
I wouldn't expect most people to use the method I did to download your pics as it involves delving into the source code and working out how the images are being displayed. I'd still suggest using watermarks though.
 
You cannot stop anyone downloading ANY image on the web.
 
I dont understand why people go to all that trouble looking at code or doing screen grabs.... The pictures are already on your hard drive.. they get downloaded to everyones hard drive who looks at the page... Not only cant you stop people downloding them,.. you actually download the pictures to there computer for them..

just look in your internet cache. there all there.. 800x800 :)
 
Actually Simon, you can just left mouse click on any of the images on your site and drag them onto the desktop. :D As everyone has said there's really no protection from your images being nicked.
 
Just use a smallish centred low opacity watermark. I find they often work best. You can't print them, but they don't look too bad on the monitor either.
 
DigitalRelish said:
I wouldn't expect most people to use the method I did to download your pics as it involves delving into the source code and working out how the images are being displayed. I'd still suggest using watermarks though.
Click to expand...

I just used right click and save picture as..... getting a 800x800 pic





Are the gallery pictures going to change?

What I mean is, if these are portfolio pictures that won't change day-in-day-out then I would say you could live without a watermark and just take the chance on the dozen or so pictures getting ripped off at low-rez.

But if they are going to be online proofs then watermark like crazy.
 
Yah just follow the link i posted above and as stated by someone else you can lower the opacity so it's just barely noticable...
 
KIPAX said:
I dont understand why people go to all that trouble looking at code or doing screen grabs.... The pictures are already on your hard drive.. they get downloaded to everyones hard drive who looks at the page... Not only cant you stop people downloding them,.. you actually download the pictures to there computer for them..

just look in your internet cache. there all there.. 800x800 :)
Click to expand...

what he said. plus you could just do a file->save page in your browser.
 
Not the best quality, but I am sure it would be good enough for some of the unscrupulous out there.

download.jpg
 
By now, I'd hope the OP gets the point ;)

Personally, I always check the source code because I'm interested in how it works.
 
Microsoft have a little app called "Snipping Tool", that seems to come with Vista & Windows 7.
If you have any viewable image (or text) good enough to view can be cut and paste or saved to be used elsewhere
 
Even if you do have right click disabled its not a full proof system as all the images end up in your internet temp files. If you clear all the temp files then brows through all the images then go back to the temp files its not hard to find the images. if you do want un watermarked images on a site then flash is the way to go as the images will become all part of the flash file.

Screen grab is still a problem though. Google picasa makes that so easy even for the average joe even if they are not tech savvy. Do not underestimate what people will try to get free of charge. The images on your site may not be high res but then nor are the images on facebook.

Watermarks are one of those funny things if you have a bad one it will look trash but if you have a good one it really can work for you and look good. The way the search engines works at indexing images you can land on an image in google image and you do not always pay much attention to where it came from. If you have your web address on that picture as part of a watermark it instantly tells everyone viewing it where it came from.

View the the watermark as a marketing opportunity not a negative and you may feel more happy about doing it.

Watermarking can be a bit of a nightmare i tested actions in photoshop then downloaded and tested about 30 programs before i came across one i was actually happy with. its called iwatermark. It does what i want and costs next to nothing it has a neat feature where you can set it to monitor a folder. when images are saved in that folder iwatermark will start processing
 
Maybe if you got the images into a flash movie?? They would not easily be copied, from source code etc.
 
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