watermarking pictures

guzzbuzz

Hi i have taken some pictures for my website but dont want anybody else to steal/use them....

Can anybody recommend a free good quality watermarking program please?

We want the water mark to be very subtle and dont want it be very obvious on the actual pictures on our site.

Also does it make a difference of the file size that im trying to watermark?

As it stands now each picture is just under 4mb in size

Thanks

santer_2

http://www.makeuseof.com/tag/3-free-easy-ways-watermark-images-offline/

http://www.google.co.uk/search?q=free+watermarks&ie=utf-8&oe=utf-8&aq=t&rls=Palemoon:en-USofficial&client=firefox-a

You could also use this to see if the watermark is easy to remove

http://www.webinpaint.com/

eporium

The Picture-Shark is a free program for watermarking photo's, this can be downloaded from Picture-Shark

A free photo editor is The GIMP which can be used to make the watermark text/logo.

Information for using the Picture-Shark and GIMP can be found here http://www.erns-eporium.co.uk/watermark.htm

Size shouldn't matter, though I have not tried 4Mb.

Pinkypants

Whats the point in watermarking a photo if it's not very obvious? If it's easy to hid or photoshop over then a watermark is pointless.

The whole idea of a watermark is to say, hey this is my photo hands off.

guzzbuzz

Pinkypants wrote: »

Whats the point in watermarking a photo if it's not very obvious? If it's easy to hid or photoshop over then a watermark is pointless.

The whole idea of a watermark is to say, hey this is my photo hands off.

If you have a solid picture, with even the faintest of text running through it, then how could they photo shop it?

Even if they could.... why would they bother?

And why would i want a huge massive printed logo or really bold text destroying the products that im trying to sell?

The point of me watermarking it is to stop lazy people just stealing my pics to use on they're websites

If they can be bothered to go to the lengths of photoshopping it then fair play to them.....but it would just be easier to take they're own pics though?

Are you they type of person that wears yellow trousers with a big logo on to tell the world you own those yellow trousers?

To everyone else, thanks for the helpful advise it was helpful and i think picture shark looks quite nice and easy to use

Much appreciated.

neilwoods

Have to agree with Pinky, subtle water marking is pointless. Anyone who knows basic photo editing will tell you, will only take a minute or two to remove small or subtle water marks.

Better off altering the metadata or even placing the picture behind a transparent layer.

guzzbuzz

neilwoods wrote: »

Have to agree with Pinky, subtle water marking is pointless. Anyone who knows basic photo editing will tell you, will only take a minute or two to remove small or subtle water marks.

Better off altering the metadata or even placing the picture behind a transparent layer.

Its not n.a.s.a's missile launch codes im trying to protect here

Its just stopping some lazy git who wants to steal my pics at the right click of a mouse

Lets not go to far here, i havent taken pictures of osama bin laden still alive and well.......

ineed

guzzbuzz wrote: »

The point of me watermarking it is to stop lazy people just stealing my pics to use on they're websites

If they can be bothered to go to the lengths of photoshopping it then fair play to them.....but it would just be easier to take they're own pics though?

because it is easier to photoshop out a faint watermark than it is to get a camera and try to take pictures of the same quality.

WhiteChristmas

Irfanview (free) will do what you want and there are loads of guides online.

BUT...

guzzbuzz wrote: »

As it stands now each picture is just under 4mb in size

In the name of lemon-scented fudge, WHY?

For online use, images should be no more than 72dpi so a full-screen jpeg shouldn't be any more than a few hundred kB.

By using high res images, all you're doing is slowing down page loading times and gobbling up people's download allowances (something you don't want to do if you want customers to access your site from their mobiles, for example).

neilwoods

ineed wrote: »

because it is easier to photoshop out a faint watermark than it is to get a camera and try to take pictures of the same quality.

Exactly, the OP for some unknown reason cannot comprehend that it it quicker to remove a minor watermark than it is to get a camera, set up the item in question, take a load of photos, take it to a computer, upload to pc, choose the pic, then maybe photo edit and upload to web.

Back to OP, just because you get answer's you don't like, no need to get ugly, nasty and sarcastic. But if that is the person you are, then may be a good idea to stay clear of public forum's.

If as you say they are not nasa missile codes (which they don't have by the way) or bin laden, but some pics you have taken of item's you sell on ebay, then why watermark them with a tiny or subtle mark, which can be easily removed.

Pugwash69

There are alternative methods that stop the casual thief. I usually place a .png with a transparent background over the top of my product images, so a right click will only offer to download the empty .png instead of the image underneath. I also disable a right-click with javascript. It won't stop a determined thief who can just download the whole site by other means.

Don't upload 4mb images either. Give them much smaller images if they are only viewing them online.

Finally, if you host your own web site, you can use server plugins like aspjpeg to automatically overlay text or other images on top of uploaded images. It depends on where you host, what access you have and what script language your pages use.

Ultimately you can't stop images from being downloaded, but you have legal means to issue a take-down notice if you can show that the images belong to you.