A couple of days ago I came across a kind of travel/lifestyle website and saw that someone had uploaded some photos from my tapas blog without crediting them or linking back. Which reminded me of something I’ve been thinking of doing for awhile now, which is to start watermarking my photos.
I’ve been looking around for some free (or cheap) watermarking tools or software. The one shown above is a free online watermark tool but, although I can watermark photos in batches with it, afterwards I have to copy each photo to my computer individually, which is a lot of work. Especially as I want to replace ALL the pics on my tapa blog with watermarked ones.
Any suggestions?
casa azahar 
I should look at doing the same – but I have no idea how to do it for previous photos. I shall watch this space with interest.
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For previous photos, Archie, you (and I) will have to watermark and re-upload every darn thing. Which at least will be easier now that we can bulk upload photos on WordPress.
Still need that perfect watermark software though …
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Oh, wow. Something I haven’t ever even thought or worried about. Sounds like a lot of work. And itsn’t it sad that there are the sort of people out there that make it necessary to go through all that?
a while ago on the gardening blogs there was a big furor about a site that would basically upload their entire posts, thereby having “blog posts” without effort.
That sort of dishonesty is rather sickening, as is the stealing of photos.
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Well, I wouldn’t mind if a thumbnail of one of my photos showed up on someone’s blog post. But the one I mentioned was a restaurant review and the person actually uploaded my photos, using their name, to a photo gallery belonging to this website.
It’s quite flattering when someone wants to use a photo of mine, and they can even send me an email if they’d like an original copy. I’m not doing the tapa blog for the money, after all. But it’s weird to see MY photos being displayed on another website’s photo gallery as being someone else’s.
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I post a Creative Commons non-commercial share alike license, but beyond that, if I really wanted to be sure that nobody used my images and so on from mister anchovy’s, I would simply not post them. I don’t really care if somebody makes use of photos I post. I’d be pissed off if somebody took credit for a picture of one of my paintings but I’d get over it pretty quickly.
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It might be more trouble than it’s worth to go back and re-load the watermarked photos, but I’d make sure that all piccys in future were watermarked. There are programs which do the marking (steganography, I think it’s called) but I know little of how that all works. Steganography is a little like a secret watermark — artists use it, I think.
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Well, I’ve been needing an excuse to reorganise my tapas photo files anyhow, SC, and I’d be able to bulk upload them with WordPress now (before it had to be one at a time).
If I can find the right software then I think I’ll do it. Besides, it’ll be another little project to keep me busy over the summer.
For the most part I agree that when I put images online that they end up fair game for anyone else who wants to use them, mister anchovy. And I’m pretty much over it except I still like the idea of using a watermark, especially if it will bring the tapas blog to the attention of more people.
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Here you go, free watermarking programs:
http://www.picmarkr.com/
http://www.picture-shark.com/watermark_freeware_image_protect_gallery_default.htm
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Thanks for the links, silverstar. And welcome to casa az. 🙂
I’ve checked both of them out and they seem even more limited than the one I found earlier…
Watermark Tool
That one gives you a choice of font (though not the one I want) as well as various colour and transparency options. But it won’t let me bulk download the watermarked images to my computer. It’s looking like finding what I want, especially if I’m going to redo all the photos on the tapa blog, isn’t going to end up being free.
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You should drop a comment on those blogs, though. Be polite but firm, because frankly a lot of people are just really stupid and don’t realize it’s stealing. If you take the high road they will grovel for you. Don’t tell them I said that, though.
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It wasn’t a blog, as such, Rain. It was a restaurant review forum with a photo album attached to it and someone had uploaded three of my photos there. I wouldn’t mind someone using the odd pic on their blog or whatever, but three in a photo album that said ‘uploaded by so-and-so’ under it kinda bugs me.
I’m not going to put a copyright symbol in my watermark. Just ‘azahar-sevilla.com’ so that people (including ‘borrowers’ ) can find the source more easily.
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