Thinking to post photos on internet without copyright notice

[sandro9mm]

What do you think about copyright watermarks?

I was thinking lately that it takes too much time to add watermarks, and they greatly uglify some photos!

I also saw allot of professional photographers posting photos without any watermark, since their art has already become recognizeble etc... but what about me? an unknown artist, trying to make my way out? Is it a good idea?

Maybe better edit exif and drop credential?

I also noticed that no matter what u do with watermarks, people will still use them, repost and claim their own...

what is your take on this?

Thx.

[dugcross]

Personally, I hate watermarks, but I also understand why people use them. My problem is when a photographer puts the watermark right across the image. I say if you do want to watermark, put it either across the top or bottom of the images. If you don't want to watermark but still protect your image you should look into this plugin for Photoshop from Digimarc

https://www.digimarc.com/solutions/images/

It invisibly watermarks images, put different information into the image. The basic plug-in is $49.00 but if you go with the pro plug-in which is $99.00 you get the Digimarc Search Service which will constantly search the internet to see if anybody has taken any of your photos from your web site. If anyone has, it will notify you. This to me is even better than watermarks especially with the service constantly searching the web to see if anybody has snagged an image of yours.

[bsaber]

I put a watermark on my images as a way to spread my name. I never put watermarks on images that I'm paid for though. Doug's recommendation is a great solution for protecting your images along with registering with the Copyright Office.

[mikekelley]

Waste of time and effort if you ask me.

None of my shots on my site have a watermark and they're all 1024. If someone wants to use it as a background or post it on they're blog, to be honest I'm not going to lose sleep over it.

If anyone is good enough at photoshop they can remove it in about a minute, and a bit longer for the complex (uglier) ones, if they really want it.