If you look around right now, chances are, you will come across something that's branded. Brand recognition is a big thing, especially in the commercial world of products. When it comes to your photography, should you still watermark your images?
Brand standards and branding are very important to many companies. When it comes to art, it's a bit different. Sure, old paintings are signed once done, and many people believe your photo should be the same. For some, it's all about brand awareness, or getting your name out there. However, not everyone agrees. Some may say that watermarks are distracting, and I think we all can agree we have seen a few that are.
In this video from photographer John Gress, he shares one perspective of why you might need to move away from watermarking your photos before you post them online. This may as well be a valuable reason for many to stop. Gress does still use watermarks on proofs, so there are some instances where you still want to.
Sure, watermarks may deter some theft but not all the time. Depending on where it is placed, your watermark can easily be cropped out of the photo as stated in this video. Does that mean you should stop?
With many things in life, there's always a list of pros and cons of why you should or shouldn't do something. In the end, I think it's up to you to weigh them out and see if its right for you. Do you agree with Gress' reasoning in this video? Do you or do you not watermark your images and why? Let us know in the comments below.
The human brain is conditioned to be attracted to text. If we see text we often read the text before we realize we are reading text. The attraction of the eye to text causes the watermark to dictate how the image is experienced by the viewer of the image. For me, any benefits of watermarking are far outweighed by this issue. That is the sole reason why I have never and will never apply a watermark to any of my images.
Ok, maybe not the sole reason, but a significant reason nonetheless (I was feeling a bit melodramatic at the moment I was typing).
"The human brain is conditioned to be attracted to text." Is it? Are there studies on that?
I don't believe it. The human brain is conditioned by millions of years of evolution to respond to many other visual stimuli before text. I'd argue that given a good picture, text will be the last thing noticed, particularly if the text is deliberately placed and toned to be non-obtrusive.
There’s research that supports my statement. Hsueh-Cheng Wang and Marc Pomplum published an article in the Journal of Vision about the attraction to text. It wasn’t directly about photography but the psychology of our attraction to text.
So, as cheesy as this photograph is, your attention is attracted first to the branding in the corner? https://www.cs.cmu.edu/~choset/hair/image001.jpg
According to quite a bit of research, yes regardless of if I'm conscious of it or not. Only a part of our experience of art is in the conscious mind. Many scientists are doing work on the experience of visual art beyond the conscious mind through the use of brain scans. Its amazing what happens in the mind when we view art and we are not aware of what's happening. Basically, the research shows that we read the text before we realize that we read the text. Researchers have set up cameras in art galleries to track the eye movement when someone is viewing an artwork. If there was text in the art, it showed that the eye moved to the text more frequently. The participants were then given a survey and it was shown that they didn't realize they looked the text in the art as much as they did. I'm not pulling this out of the air. This was the topic of way too many class discussions in art school.
Of course, the natural response might be that the conscious experience is more important to this discussion. For this photo, obviously someone intentionally matched the colors to make the text blend in well. However, I will say that maybe you did a bit of "cherry picking" here. I think you would agree that far more photos that include watermarks do not disguise them as well as this photo. Most watermarks I see online are big and obtrusive and do nothing but grab attention.
(also, thanks for the Olan Mills nostalgia. brought back some good memories)
Well, I don't agree that seeing text or that your watermark or signature on an image is going to stop that person from continuing to view the image because he sees the W/S first. I put a watermark on all SM posted images. On my upcoming website, when a client decides to purchase an image, they'll have the option to choose if they want it on the image or not. In regards to seeing it on the image, it won't distract negatively, the image should speak for itself.
I don't have a problem with branding one's work, tastefully done.
Imagine you own a company that sells box trucks, and you wanted to show off your trucks, would you use a new clean truck, or would you pick one that got tagged by some gang?
The gang tag doesn't make the truck less good but it will make the truck less appealing to prospective buyers. Watermarks do the same, especially obnoxious ones where they use a large font, or worse some cheesy obnoxious design to go with the oversized text.
Watermarks have the same effect as on an image as someone taking a landscape photo and forgetting that in the corner of the frame is some trash from someone who was camping in the area and left some McDonald's wrappers in the frame. The rest of the image can be great, but the trash will make the image less appealing.
Art is highly subjective and relies heavily on emotion. With so much planning going into a shot to ensure that there are no distracting elements, why go out of your way to add one that is not desired by the end viewer or relevant?
When you look at a beautiful natural landscape, what is more likely to come to the average viewers mind, the beauty of nature or the thought "yo this mountain range looks great but it is missing something, it needs a visual of" yoloswag420 photography" or something randomly floating in the air".
Naruto Uzumaki wrote, “The gang tag doesn't make the truck less good but it will make the truck less appealing to prospective buyers. Watermarks do the same, especially obnoxious ones where they use a large font, or worse some cheesy obnoxious design to go with the oversized text.”
From my observations, the people who get upset about watermarks are other PHOTOGRAPHERS! I have YET to license or sell my images to another photographer: They are not my targeted customer.
Watermarks can be small, transparent, tactful, and/or cool-looking. If a third-party likes your posted photographs and wants to purchase prints or secure an editorial or commercial or another reproduction license, your affixed watermark/logo will not stop them from contacting you.
Here’s a LEGAL reason to affix a watermark (logo), copyright attribution, image title, licensing information, metadata, and/or other “Copyright Management Information” (CMI) to your posted/shared images. Per 17 USC §§ 1202-1203 (part of copyright’s DMCA), US-based copyright infringers who knowingly remove, cover-up, or change CMI (watermarks) with Photoshop or any editing software to hide their copyright infringements or induce others to infringed, can be liable from actual money damages and profits OR $2,500 to $25,000 in statutory damages PLUS attorney fees PLUS legal costs (at the court’s discretion). A timely registered copyright claim is NOT required to pursue CMI violators. See photolaw (dot) net/ did-someone-remove-the-copyright-notice-from-your-photograph (dot) html.
Typically there are many other penalties for the theft of copyrighted images for commercial purposes.
The issue is that for people using photos to target a general audience, the goal is to catch the eye of the viewer, evoke some kind of emotion (just not anger or cringe at the photographer unless you are making content in the hopes of getting shared on a cringe subreddits).
A more successful photo is one that directs the eye to meaningful parts of the image, and getting the user to explore the image. With so much effort going into each element of an image, why ding it by adding a distracting element that does not contribute to the meaning, direction and emotion of the image?
Imagine if someone watermarked a song by having someone constantly repeating the record label name in the background, would that add to the song or take away from it.
to take it to an absurd level, let's take a song that establishes emotion, setting, and tells a story focused on fantasy, and have a generic lawyer or exec just repeating the record label name in the background.
In a photo, each element is carefully chosen, and together they form a visual symphony. The watermark is this guy on the balcony in the video with the messed up trumpet. https://youtu.be/QxnY2SWZTvk
The rest of the performance can still be great, but to the average viewer or listener, it would be subjectively better without the distraction.
Beyond that, most copyright infringement of images are things like a high school student using an image they found on Google in their PowerPoint presentation. And the major commercial infringements end up being a random fly by night company in the Shenzhen market using a random image they find online and modified to fit their packaging. In those cases, the DMCA is useless, and if you hire a lawyer in their country to go after them, they can drag it out and and transfer all assets before they lose the case.
Naruto Uzumaki wrote, “Typically there are MANY [emphasis added] other penalties for the theft of copyrighted images for commercial purposes.”
“Many other [money] penalties”? Could you kindly provide one or more United States legal citations/links to support your penalty claim? I’ve included mine below.
US copyright infringements occur when unlicensed images appear in non-Fair Use editorial, sports, information, commercial, and other media. To receive money damages (“penalties”), the infringed photograph MUST be “timely” registered with the US Copyright Office (USCO), either before the infringement begins or registered within three-months of its first-date of publications, as that permits the plaintiff photographer to pursue statutory money damages from $750 to $30,000 and up to $150,000 for willful infringement (removing, changing, or covering up CMI, watermarks, logos, copyright attribution, and other copyright identifiers constitutes WILLFUL copyright infringement – and that’s one of the legal benefits of including a watermark). Importantly, a timely registered copyright claim also permits a plaintiff photographer to pursue attorney fees & legal costs against infringers!
Here are the US federal copyright statutes: 17 USC § 412 (Registration as prerequisite to certain remedies for infringement) + 17 USC § 504 (Remedies for infringement: Damages and profits) + 17 USC § 505 (Remedies for infringement: Costs and attorney’s fees).
As a general rule, infringed photographs not timely registered with the USCO are NOT enforceable for money damages, as any out-of-court settlement or trial verdict will NOT cover their attorney fees – making it un-economical to pursue US-based copyright infringers.
According to one survey (paywall), the cost of US copyright litigation averages $397,000 from discovery, trial, and appeal. See American Intellectual Property Law Association (AIPLA), 2019 Report of the Economic Survey,at I-208 (2019), https://www.aipla.org/detail/journal-issue/2019-report-of-the-economic-s....
Copyright attorney, Andrew Epstein, writes, “We recommend always attaching a watermark or other copyright management information [CMI] to all works that you distribute. Although you do not need to have a copyright registration to recover under the DMCA [CMI], we always recommend [timely] registering your photographs with the Copyright Office to be able to qualify for maximum awards for copyright infringement ($750 to $150,000 per infringement, plus costs and attorney’s fees).” http://www.photolaw.net/did-someone-remove-the-copyright-notice-from-you...
Naruto Uzumaki wrote, “With so much effort going into each element of an image, why ding it by adding a distracting element that does not contribute to the meaning, direction and emotion of the image?
Affixing my photographs with extended image captions, watermarks, robust metadata, URL and/or social media handle does not impact the essence of my assignment, stock, or personal photography.
Photographers, who are hesitant about including CMI, can affix a cool-looking watermark logo (that matches their photography direction & style) to preserve their creative legal rights.
Naruto Uzumaki wrote, “Imagine if someone watermarked a song by having someone constantly repeating the record label name in the background, would that add to the song or take away from it.”
Music is affixed with metadata.
Naruto Uzumaki wrote, “…most copyright infringement of images are things like a high school student using an image they found on Google in their PowerPoint presentation.”
That’s incorrect. Per copyright’s Fair Use (17 USC § 107), high school students, bloggers, the media, and others can lawfully include copyright-protected photographs for academic/educational research (class PowerPoint presentation, book reports, etc.), in certain news reporting, or to comment or criticize a photograph (like in an art/photo article).
Ed Greenberg (NYC copyright attorney) writes, “It is our experience that a prominent [photographer] shooter is as likely to be ripped off as an unknown. The quality of the shot does not necessarily affect the likelihood of it being stolen as much as the subject. Often there is simply no rhyme or reason as we have seen cases where very pedestrian, routine images, which could have been legally licensed for peanuts, were nevertheless infringed …Bottom line: theft is easy and rampant. Protection is cheap and effective. REGISTER [emphasis] everything you shoot, all of the time.” See http://thecopyrightzone.com/?p=330
Joshua Kaufman, a NYC copyright attorney/litigator, sums up (timely) copyright registration in the first 20-seconds of his short video: https://youtu.be/cBOKkrleY3Y
Images also contain metadata. A watermark is different from metadata. Metadata is doing things like appending text or raw data to part of an image. For example, offset (h) 00000000 to 00000FF0 can contain almost any metadata that you want for an image; that info will not be visible on the image, but it can be read by any application that can interpret the metadata.
Similar properties apply to audio files. An audio watermark is analogous to the trumpet video that I posted earlier, or someone who owns a record label standing in the corner of the recording room and repeatedly shouting out the name of the record label a the singer/ band is recording.
In either case, it takes away from final image or audio track as it is a distracting element that is not naturally part of the scene.
PS, there are no "cool" looking watermarks. People who believe their watermark looks cool, are likely thinking along the lines of the gang members who spray paying a barely legible tag othe side of a bridge, thinking their gang tag looks cool. It is only cool in the mind of the person doing the tagging, to everyone else it is simply urban blight that makes their town or city less pleasant to live in.
Naruto Uzumaki wrote, “And the major commercial infringements end up being a random fly by night company in the Shenzhen market using a random image they find online and modified to fit their packaging. In those cases, the DMCA is useless, and if you hire a lawyer in their country to go after them, they can drag it out and and transfer all assets before they lose the case.”
I agree that it’s typically not possible for US-based photographers to stop the vast majority of international infringements or receive money damages for those very infringements. The use of a DMCA “Take-Down Notice” only applies to US ISPs whose members post non-Fair Use infringing photographs to their web and/or social media sites. Some international countries may have an equivalent DMCA-type provision to remove or block unlicensed photographs.
More and more US law firms are partnering with foreign attorneys, including in Asia. And if the infringement is SUBSTANTIAL and the photograph is being exploited on packaging or in other prominent, pricey media-buys by a major business entity, then there might be possibilities to receive money damages and/or stop the infringing action altogether.
FYI: US photographers who have registered their images with the USCO can stop international infringers from exporting their unlicensed work into the US. Photographers can record their photographs with the US Customs & Border Protection (CBP) who will detain, seize, or forfeit the infringing work from entering the US: https://iprr.cbp.gov/ So, if Walmart USA is importing your unlicensed photographs from Canada, Mexico, China, etc., you can sue them, or push them to enter into a licensing agreement.
"Depending on where it is placed, your watermark can easily be cropped out of the photo"
Then don't place them there. Doh!
Some photographers will try to avoid that in advance by ruining their images. For example, there are some photographers that think they are so amazing that the world will want to steal their images, thus they will upload a low res 1024x768 or lower res image of a random snapshot, and then plaster an obnoxious watermark over the main subject, and then wonders why their image popularity is not matching their ego.
Yes, there are such folks. So?
Also, FWIW, I don't expect the world to consider my work amazing, and yet it has already been "stolen".
His title is clickbait. It's not "A Bad Idea". The appropriate title would have been "Why I choose not to watermark my work" or "Some reasons not to watermark your work."
"Depending on where it is placed, your watermark can easily be cropped out of the photo"
Well, depending on your skills, watermark can easily be removed from any part of the photo, there are whole Youtube guides and Photoworks tutorials on that. Still doesn't mean we shouldn't put watermarks at least for social media.
On social media, people tend to avoid sharing watermarked images as they are seen as distracting elements that take away from the image. On the other hand, non-watermarked images will tend to have a source in the comments, especially for images that catch on really well. For example some photographers will have a great collection of extremely cute Lynx pictures, and one will be posted to social media and people will quickly link to a portfolio if available, as people seek out more cuteness.
"On the other hand, non-watermarked images will tend to have a source in the comments"
I have literally NEVER seen this.
Many subreddits will ban you for not sourcing images, especially art ones.
For the ones less strong about those rules, they will have source finding bots that will add a source in the comments, but in most cases, the user who submitted the image, will post a source. This is because one of the goals of most communities like that is not only to see the main image, but also other images.
For example, if you see an extremely cute image of a river otter, you will want to see the other really cute river otters that the photographer took images of. It also works to keep those subreddits more active while also directing people to artists and photographers, as people start to pick out other highly cute images, and share them, then you get effectively a sourced highlight reel of cuteness (at least with the more wildlife focused stuff), as well as art focused subreddits.
Catherine Bowlene wrote, “‘Depending on where it is placed, your watermark can easily be cropped out of the photo’ Well, depending on your skills, watermark can easily be removed from any part of the photo…”
Here’s the LEGAL reason to affix a watermark (logo), copyright attribution, image title, licensing information, metadata, and/or other “Copyright Management Information” (CMI) to your posted/shared images.
Per 17 USC §§ 1202-1203 (part of copyright’s DMCA), US-based copyright infringers who knowingly remove, cover-up, or change CMI (watermarks) with Photoshop or any editing software to hide their copyright infringements or induce others to infringed, can be liable from actual money damages and profits OR $2,500 to $25,000 in statutory damages PLUS attorney fees PLUS legal costs (at the court’s discretion). A timely registered copyright claim is NOT required to pursue CMI violators.
Copyright attorney, Andrew Epstein, writes, “We recommend always attaching a watermark or other copyright management information [CMI] to all works that you distribute. Although you do not need to have a copyright registration to recover under the DMCA [CMI], we always recommend [timely] registering your photographs with the Copyright Office to be able to qualify for maximum awards for copyright infringement ($750 to $150,000 per infringement, plus costs and attorney’s fees).” http://www.photolaw.net/did-someone-remove-the-copyright-notice-from-you...
If you choose not to timely register your photographs with the US Copyright Office, at the very least, affix them with some type of CMI to give you some legal action against willful copyright infringers.
Joshua Kaufman, copyright litigator, sums up (timely) copyright registration in the first 20-seconds of his short video: youtu (dot) be/cBOKkrleY3Y
Whenever I see big-ass obtrusive watermarks, words come to mind, "dated, insecure, and LOL".
The front door of my house has a glass window. I still have a lock on the door.
So, what cha's got that's better than a watermark? You realize of course your EXIF data is usually stripped through various social media platforms. There's no other DRM elements present embedded inside your photographs.
Here’s the LEGAL reason to affix a watermark (logo), copyright attribution, image title, licensing information, metadata, and/or other “Copyright Management Information” (CMI) to your posted/shared images.
Per 17 USC §§ 1202-1203 (part of copyright’s DMCA), US-based copyright infringers who knowingly remove, cover-up, or change CMI (watermarks) with Photoshop or any editing software to hide their copyright infringements or induce others to infringed, can be liable from actual money damages and profits OR $2,500 to $25,000 in statutory damages PLUS attorney fees PLUS legal costs (at the court’s discretion). A timely registered copyright claim is NOT required to pursue CMI violators. See this copyright attorney link: photolaw (dot) net/ did-someone-remove-the-copyright-notice-from-your-photograph (dot) html.
If you choose not to timely register your photographs with the US Copyright Office, at the very least, affix them with some type of CMI to give you some legal action against willful copyright infringers.
Joshua Kaufman, copyright litigator, sums up (timely) copyright registration in the first 20-seconds of his short video: youtu (dot) be/cBOKkrleY3Y
Nine times out of ten, if a photo has a watermark on it, it's horrible and the photographer has a much higher opinion of the photo than the rest of the world. I'd rather have my online photos look good than have all of them be marred by a watermark because someone might post it to Pinterest and a Nike ad exec is on Pinterest and finds it and can't do a google image reverse search and find that I actually took it. If you get all of the top 10,000 greatest photos and photos that have brought people the most work, maybe 8 of them would have watermarks.
The first sentence is unnecessarily insulting. The rest is good.
Where did you get this stat from Jeff? I've noticed that many famous photographers do have signatures on their images, or they have some kind of semi-transparent logo on the image (which is worse to my mind than a discreet signature as it attacks the integrity of the whole image). Or they simply post such small images that the image is of no value, watermark or no watermark.
Larger images with a discreet watermark seems to be the right compromise, if you want others to be able to find you again as a photographer (sports, weddings, dogs, portraits, boudoir). Landscape photographers don't get many commissions, it's true, beautiful as that art form is.