Just a random thought for the morning.
Watermarks used to be the way to go, to stop people from just taking your images and using them however they want. They’re also used to send sample images and then ask for payment.
With AI advancing, it’s very likely going to get easier for the layperson to click a button and have AI remove your watermark.
How do you plan to safeguard against this?
No one’s stealing my shit images anyway
My answer is perfect! I applaud.
Just get paid for your work beforehand. Focus on doing commissioned work, don’t try and sell photos afterwards (which is a dying market anyway). Watermarks are pointless these days. And I barely see anyone using them anymore.
My account is private
Watermarks haven’t been a secure way to protect your images for years.
The only way to be 100% sure you can retain full control of an image is 1) never post it online or 2) never post it in full resolution or crop. Anything else is able to be gotten around.
Other than that, the only way I keep myself from losing my mind about it is knowing that I’m not nearly famous enough for it to matter, and even if someone steals one of my photos, the most they can do is make a print and sell it to some rando somewhere.
Watermarks haven’t been a secure way to protect your images for years.
This is the truth of it. They’re ugly and they serve little purpose.
I’m not concerned about AI removing watermarks because I never watermark my work.
I use watermarks not as a way of theft prevention, but it just means if photos are shared then viewers still know who took the photo. I don’t care if people share any pictures I put online, cos they’re always naff res compared to the original
For that, wouldn’t it be nicer to have a margin at the bottom and put name there instead of ruining the picture? Unless you have a very nice looking autograph.
Yep. If anyone wants to steal my website enhanced tiny JPEG sure. But I would never put it out there full resolution. Heck I don’t even think any social media platforms even allow that they shrink them to shit
The venn diagram of people who watermark their photos and people who make photos anyone would actually want to steal are two non-overlapping circles.
I like this
Oof.
Everyone is saying not to bother watermarking. And nobody who does is any good does it. As a counter example here is a highly successful photographer whose work is fantastic that uses obnoxiously large watermarks: https://cherylwalsh.art/
You can see by her subject matter, her work might be one that is frequently stolen by people who don’t want to pay for prints. Much more so than the average photog selling prints.
The watermark is big enough that it would not be easy to remove by an average person even as tools to do so improve.
Y’all acting like you are making a living from selling landscapes… in reality that a handful of people
99% of my revenue comes from paid gigs, I think it’s wasted energy trying to protect my images from being stolen, it’s 1% of my revenue and even then, I’m basically doing mental gymnastics to prevent the slim chance that MAYBE someone or an AI steals an image and uses it, and that same person was going to be a paying cx otherwise
I’d rather just spend my extra brain power and time playing a game or working out
It doesn’t affect me (hobbyist) but if I’d be concerned I’d use something like this
https://www.technologyreview.com/2023/10/23/1082189/data-poisoning-artists-fight-generative-ai/I never put watermark because it looks too ugly and ruin the picture.
But if I somehow really need to protect it and it has to be watermark, I’d put big translucent watermark that stretch through the whole image so the AI will not understand which part is watermark. But again, it ought to ruin the picture.
I have a related question: How common is it for images to get swiped? I am a hobbyist and generally feel like if someone stole an image I took, I could just take another one another day. If an image is really meaningful to me, I don’t usually post it online.
We’ll have to see if embedding content credentials takes off in cameras so the details can be kept and not erased.
Simple. I don’t post pictures online except for 30 as examples on the same places.
I’ve been looking at Openstego which looks like a reasonably secure watermark that is not immediately obvious.
Post less online.