This page was translated by AI. Please be forgiving of any mistakes.
‹ Photo Notes · 14 května, 2013
Do you put a watermark on your photographs? Or does it seem like destroying the photo to you, and do you see no point in adding a watermark?
A watermark is when …
A watermark is a protective element of valuable documents, banknotes and the like. For the same reason it is used in digital photography too. For example, in a stock photo agency you can browse all photographs for free, but all of them are of course protected by a watermark against theft. To get a photograph not spoiled by the protective watermark, you have to buy it.
But what use is a watermark to a photographer who doesn’t sell his photos through stock agencies and „only“ wants to display them in a dignified way on his own pages, on Facebook or elsewhere on the internet? Surely he won’t ruin them himself with some ugly inscriptions…
Photographs are shared
If somebody likes your photo, it’s quite possible they’ll share it on Facebook, Google+, Tumblr, Twitter, Pinterest or another of hundreds of social networks. They do it so that their friends can enjoy it too – that’s fine, because they thereby inform the public about your work and advertise you for free.
The catch is that the ways of sharing differ, and not everyone shares your work using the Like, Pin It and similar buttons. Many people save your photo to disk and then upload it to one of the social networks. And unfortunately far from everyone bothers to add the author’s name or even a link to your pages. When it happens once, nothing happens, but you’d be surprised how many of your photographs circulate on the internet without the author’s name, often with huge success. Without a watermark, though, they are for most people an anonymous work and won’t bring new visitors, fans, clients or models to your pages… whereas a photograph marked with a name and ideally the address of your website multiplies the chance that the viewer will go and look at the rest of your work too. A watermark of course doesn’t have to cover the whole photo; a small (but legible!) one somewhere in a corner is enough. Typically that is the bottom right corner, which paradoxically is also the most dangerous place for a watermark, because some servers automatically add their own watermark to photographs in exactly this spot and thereby make your mark illegible. Never mind that they actually have no right to do so, who would bother with that…?
Photographs get stolen
A watermark protects your photographs from theft as well. Yes, it is often possible to crop it off if it’s small in a corner, but the photograph then no longer stays whole. Most of your photos on the internet don’t have enough resolution for printing, but they can still be printed in smaller formats, and printing isn’t the only reason for theft. The most common reason for stealing photographs is adorning oneself with borrowed plumes, that is, the case where someone passes your photographs off as his own. Only fools do it and it almost always comes out quickly, because someone recognizes your photos and all that’s left for the culprit is shame, but new smart alecks always arise and try the same.
Reverse search – find your photographs on the net
Finding your photographs on the net is no longer hard at all. The pioneer of reverse image search was the server TinEye.com, but fairly recently Google (who else) launched the same service, and even though it doesn’t show everything either, thanks to its bottomless databases it provides much better results when searching for stray photographs. It works like this: you go to images.google.com, find the familiar search field, but don’t type any text in it; instead you click the camera icon and either paste the address of your photograph or upload it directly from disk. Google instantly shows you the result, possibly offers various sizes of your photograph, sometimes adds text often associated with this photograph, and shows similar, similarly themed or otherwise relevant photographs. You’ll find an example here http://goo.gl/s3zOW. Notice that Google added the relevant text „black and white girl smoking“ and click the „All sizes“ link next to the thumbnail.
Try reverse search on your own photographs, look at how many circulate without the author’s name, and then consider whether adding a watermark is a benefit for you or not. If you think it is, I’ll let you in on a secret: a watermark can easily be added to photographs in bulk in a number of programs – see the separate article on popular and useful programs for photographs.