Yes folks, I simply can’t believe it, but still I read comment after comment, on blogs and photography sites – by journalists and photographers alike – that they have ‘protection’ for their online work. Well, I beg to differ:
Your online photos are being stolen!
No matter what service you use or what precautions you take – it is easy to copy your online work. No technical knowledge required. Easy peasy. Am I going to tell you how to do it? Hell no!
The only way to protect your work is to use a huge, annoying, watermark. (See mine bottom right 🙂 )
Well, at least, that was true.
Anyone seen the latest retouching options in the Gimp or Photoshop? Yes, I’m talking about ‘content aware’ retouching – it’s simply gob smacking in its wizardry. Previously, removing a (simple) watermark, would require a not inconsiderable amount of technical savvy.
No longer.
I read one sentence in a blog, about Photoshop content aware retouching, downloaded a trial of Photoshop CS5 – and ‘removed’ a woman, standing in the middle of Paris crowd scene in 30 seconds. (See above – or rather not – can you see where she was?)
So, the question remains – do you display your work online – or not?
Tim,
I like your emphasis on certain sentences in your posts, the ones in grey. Nice. What are those called, technically and how do you do it?
Back to photos….don’t you need to be more irritating with your watermark? When you put it in a corner, it’s easier to crop out, right? You have to balance between protecting your work and ruining the photo, but personally, I don’t get upset with irritating watermarks right in the key part of the photo. I understand it’s necessary.
To answer your question, my answer is: it depends. My best stuff I would not display unless it had a big ugly watermark. Even if I was selling photographs themselves. But this is easy for me to say as I’m not artistic.
Artists should also protect their drawings, sketches, and the like also, not just photos.
One thing I’d add to your article that I found this week: TinEye Reverse Image Search at http://www.tineye.com/ which allows you to search variations of your photos or artwork. Very interesting. Ever seen that? Let me know what you think.
You have a great blog, Tim. Keep up the good work.
Many thanks for the post – the grey blocks are simply ‘block quotes’ – but any html mark-up can be used for highlighting text. I have the basic WordPress account so simply use the built in editor and the block quote function. However, this is interpreted by the theme I have loaded, which highlights all block quotes in grey.
The small watermark is basically a pun on people’s perception of ‘privacy’: many, many sites, block the mouse ‘right click’ – when over a picture for example – thinking this prevents you from copying it: but it is a waste of code as it protects nothing. The same for watermarks, removing even layer watermarks is becoming almost trivial. For myself, I would only ever publish important photographs at very low resolutions – they will look great on the screen, but when you come to print them they will only print at a very small size.
TinEye looks most interesting – I will check it out later – currently snowed under with UKtech Website so have not blogged much lately!
Many thanks again for the kind words regarding this blog – I’m not sure I am worthy!