Digital Watermark (Seeking Product Recommendation)

[wjastrow]

Hello.

I've started to persue the various products available for digital watermark and thought I'd start with a post here rather than download and evaluate offerings on my own.

I don't know if the model or resolution of the camera matter (it shouldn't, I would think?) but I can provide that information if it is relevant.

My understanding is that a digital watermark effectively "protects" your work but what prevents someone from "removing" the watermark and claiming an image as their own?

Is it really worth the trouble?

I look forward to your thoughts on these questions.

Thanks in advance.

 

[walter23]

My understanding is that a digital watermark effectively "protects" your work but what prevents someone from "removing" the watermark and claiming an image as their own?

In my opinion, nothing. Similar stuff in other forms of media like music and video (digital rights managment) never works.

 

[Digital Matt]

There are companies that you can pay to digitall watermark your image, and it's not something that shows up on the image. It's embedded and your images can be tracked anywhere they are used without your permission. Anywhere online that is.

http://www.digimarc.com/watermark/mypicturemarc/

 

[walter23]

That technology looks pretty easy to defeat. I'm curious now though; anybody have a watermarked image I could play with for awhile? I'd love to try

 

[Digital Matt]

Easy to defeat how?

I doubt many hackers and software pirates are responsible for stealing and reusing fine art photography and other artwork. It's mostly non professional graphic designers and kids, or people on forums trying to pass off someone elses photos as their own. I hardly think they have the know how to defeat this technology. It's used by professionals world wide with great sucess.

 

[walter23]

Easy to defeat how?

I doubt many hackers and software pirates are responsible for stealing and reusing fine art photography and other artwork. It's mostly non professional graphic designers and kids, or people on forums trying to pass off someone elses photos as their own. I hardly think they have the know how to defeat this technology. It's used by professionals world wide with great sucess.

Couldn't you just load the image into a basic photo editor (maybe a freeware one, if adobe has an agreement with digimarc to refuse editing operations on watermarked images) and resample it at a slightly different size, say plus or minus 1 pixel in each dimension? Since the watermark is embedded in the image data itself this would probably destroy it, no? No sophisticated software hacking or cryptanalysis required

 

[Digital Matt]

It's not that simple. You should read up on their site.

This is a small excerpt:

Can a digital watermark be removed?
Digimarc does not provide tools or software to remove its digital watermarks. Removing a Digimarc digital watermark without discernibly altering the image quality is a difficult process. We always suggest that the image creator/owner retain an original copy of the unwatermarked image.

Does my watermark survive other types of post compression manipulation?
A MyPictureMarc digital watermark can survive the following changes to an image:

* Any amount of image rotation
* Renaming
* Digital copies
* Cropping above a minimum size of 256x256 pixels

The watermarks can be removed, sure, but at what cost to image quality? If you have to degrade the quality to the point where it's unusable to get rid of the water mark, then it's done it's job.

This software doesn't prevent your images from being stolen or used. It gives you the ability to find out when it's happened, and by whom, and take appropriate legal action. Read the faq for more info.