advice on watermark

[tonmestrom]

<p>couldn't find the answer int he archives so here goes:</p>

<p>is there software that watermarks the image virtually invisible but shows up prominently in a print?</p>

[William Kahn]

<p>Ton, here's one:</p>

<p><a href="http://www.digimarc.com/technology/about-digital-watermarking">http://www.digimarc.com/technology/about-digital-watermarking</a></p>

<p>It's available in Photoshop for JPEGS on a limited basis...</p>

[eric friedemann]

Ton, you might email and consult with Alain Briot who wrote this interesting article on protecting images:

 

 

http://www.luminous-landscape.com/columns/they_are_stealing_our_work.shtml

[tonmestrom]

<p>thanks for the swift reply</p>

<p>William. I'm familiar with digimarc but I think there's better software<br>

Thanks Eric</p>

[bobatkins]

<p>In a word, no.</p>

<p>Just about all you can do to prevent useage is to put a large but faint © symbol across the whole image. Small copyright notices can easily be cloned out. </p>

<p>I'm not aware of any technique that could render a watermark invisible on a monitor but prominent in a print made from a jpeg. You can do such a thing with images in a PDF format, but you can't display a PDF image on a web page. You need a format that has layers that can be viewed separately but can only be printed together. That doesn't apply to JPEG, TIFF, PNG or anything else you can display on a web page. There may be other proprietary formats than PDF, but then you'd need appropriate software to view and print them. Even then you could do a screen capture (unless, again you use some proprietary software for display etc.)</p>

 

[tonmestrom]

<p>thanks Bob for the elaborate answer</p>

[Tim_Lookingbill]

<p>This painting...</p>

<p>http://farm4.static.flickr.com/3363/3571589962_60211b5b1f_o.jpg</p>

<p>...viewed at 100% shows a clever way to embed a watermark so stealthily it doesn't distract from the aesthetics of the work while making it impossible to detect and clone out. I guess it follows the premise if you don't know it's there, it can't be changed.</p>

<p>A photographer could apply the same technique by constructing a subtle wall paper pattern of one's name/logo on a Photoshop layer on a blend mode (Difference? Exclusion?) set to an opacity level that allows blending into the image making it undetectable at smaller zoom views. See below a screenshot of the above painting detail showing how well the tiny watermark is blended into the painting. </p><div></div>

[sarah_fox]

<p>Ton, I suspect you've already thought about the finely patterned watermarks on some checks that clearly show up as "VOID" when photocopied. I've tried unsuccessfully to create similar watermarks, but maybe fine patterning could be used to do something similar with our online images.</p>