Obnoxious Copyright logos in photos

I do not know if I am the only one this bugs, but I find the large copyright logos in the middle of a photo distracting. It is hard to evaluate an image with all that business going on. A subtle ©logo in a lower corner of the frame is more than enough - expecially if you have your copyright data in your exif files. If you want a valuable critique of your image, lose the billboard and let the viewer concentrate on the image.

Is there something to critique here? Hows about share a picture with or without a watermark. Doesn't bother me.

Agreed. I have trouble enjoying a photo with something slapped in the middle.

This tends to come up fairly often. Over at NAPP when they do the image of the week, they always make it a point to mention the "large number" of good images that were looked over due to an obnoxious watermark.

I have no problems seeing right through watermarks to view the images. It is a lot better than seeing your image at another site posted as someone elses work.,

Like anything, you need to strike a balance. The desire to protect your work is totally understandable, but when the protection obscures the intent of the image, it works to no one's advantage. Thieves seem to have an innate ability to circumvent watermarks, so in essence, you are only keeping honest people honest. The big problem with that, is the honest people are the ones looking to buy an image and they might overlook an image with a totally obnoxious watermark.

I hate watermarks, if someone wants to use your work it's so easy to crop/Photoshop it out. There's really no point.

maverick75 wrote in post #15709276
I hate watermarks, if someone wants to use your work it's so easy to crop/Photoshop it out. There's really no point.

This is a fact. Watermarks serve no purpose other than to advertise your studio name and to annoy those that might want to view your image. Photos that have the gigantic watermark splashed across the center of the image I click right past.

saea501 wrote in post #15709893
This is a fact. Watermarks serve no purpose other than to advertise your studio name and to annoy those that might want to view your image.

Nope. Section 1202 of the U.S. Copyright Act makes it illegal for someone to remove the watermark from your photo so that it can disguise the infringement when used. The fines start at $2500 and go to $25,000 in addition to attorneys' fees and any damages for the infringement.

Which makes more sense than complaining about something that you have no control over? ; )

http://www.petapixel.c​om …atermarks/comme​nt-page-1/

http://photographylife​.com …rk-a-photo-in-lightroom-3

No one likes a big showy watermark in the middle of their picture. No one.

saea501 wrote in post #15709893
This is a fact. Watermarks serve no purpose other than to advertise your studio name and to annoy those that might want to view your image.

No purpose? You mean, they don't ensure that the photo isn't illegally "stolen" and used without permission? Removing a watermark that is small, and along the margin of the photo, is easy to do - heck, someone could just crop that edge of the image out. Trying to remove a huge watermark that is right over the photo's subject, however, is virtually impossible to do without damaging the quality of the image (at the pixel level) - hence, no one even bothers.

Laws don't stop image / copyright theft - just because it's illegal doesn't mean people won't do it. Huge obnoxious watermarks do stop a lot of potential image theft. So, they do serve a purpose.

All that being said, I personally hate watermarks, and do not bother to look at images that have them. But just because I hate them does not mean that I am going to say things about them that aren't true.

Pretty hard to sort out isn't it. If you make it small and quiet it'll just get cropped out by someone who wants the photo as their own. Make it large and obnoxious and it'll upset people who want to see it as it should be. (though of course you can digimarc them)

I have a choice. I can post photos on the web with a watermakr right in the middle or I just won;t post shots on the web.

My decision? Watermark.

If you don't watermark properly that just means you haven't had a photo stolen yet. And I don't mean by a model mayhem chick for Facebook.

Case in point....

Photo as it appears on my web site....

I try and ignore them

Different people approach watermarking in different ways. I myself don't sell my photos, and I don't mind if folks want to get some personal enjoyment by, say, using a shot as a "desktop" or making a small print. I've had some non-profit organizations also use them with permission on a Web site or one or two other uses, but the images are Web-size, not suitable for even a good quality 8x10 print.

Now, if ever my photos were to have some "commercial value", well, they'd still only be "publicly available" as Web-size/resolution images...

Now, I've never seriously addressed how I would respond if I found that someone(s) was guilty of appropriating a shot of mine for "inappropriate" purposes.

There have been incidents I've been aware of though, Facebook "pages" that have taken other people's work and posted the shots, even removing watermarks, with absolutely no "hint" that the work was not theirs, and these pages are "photography" pages, not just your "common joe" posting a photo because they "love" it. You would think that photographers would know better -- I mean it's one thing to use the Facebook "Share" function, that's common practice and the "artist" is typically acknowledged, but to post an image as if it's "mine", well, that should be a no-no, at least in the photographic/artistic community. The times when we've seen this happen on Facebook, the "owner" of the page gets bombarded by complaints and Facebook gets notified and typically they take the page down.

That being said, there are some watermarks that are actually "minimal" in the "intrusive" effects, in fact sometimes you have to peek a bit to spot them. The idea is to have something there that would discourage someone "taking ownership" without totally spoiling the visual "impact" of the image...