Watermarking - when do to it?

iamtomlew

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Hello world. A bit nervous here - my first post on TPF!

I do a bit of beauty/model/band photography, all photos which the client uses for promotional purposes. I'm stuck as to whether or not I should be watermarking the photos with my website url or not. I've seen people with no watermarks, small discrete ones, and huge ones with giant url's across a good portion of the image. If a client is paying me to take these photos, do I have the right to put a small url on the image? Is that something you just price out before hand that if you choose to have no watermark you pay more?

What are your thoughts? :D:D:D
 
I'm not a pro but this is my opinion: Showing them on your website with a mark is fine. I wouldn't give the finished images to a client with watermarks, however. If you are furnishing them with hard prints, stamp the back and/or include a business card. I donated some framed prints for a charity auction and signed the matt (I don't have business cards.)

As far as the size of the watermark, for me, the less conspicuous, the better.
 
I think this comes down to the contract and ownership rights you may or may not have discussed with your client. I am sure there are people a lot more qualified to answer this on here than me, but from what i understand whether you have the right to put them there is determined by what your client has paid you for. I would ask them if they mind you putting them there, and send a sample with a small discreet watermark in one of the corners, they are more likely to agree to this than a large distracting one.
watermarks like this are generally purely for advertising, they dont a lot away from the image, and the image can still be easily used with it in place. large transparent ones across the middle are usually to prevent them being downloaded and used without your consent.
 
I find that 99.999% of watermarks to be distracting and take attention away from the image. That's why I don't use them. I want the viewers attention to be on the image itself. You should strive to make your images so good that people ask who make this instead of just shoving your name in someone's face with a distracting watermark.
 
Don't watermark/sign/add logo to images destined for advertising/promotional use by a commercial client.

They want to advertise/promote their business, not yours.

U.S. copyright law grants the copyright owner a broad bundle of rights.
Consequently, when providing images for commercial use you need to provide the client a use license (essentially a photo rental agreement) that stipulates quite specifically how, where, how big, how long, etc, they can use your photograph.

However, you can indeed add a use license provision that stipulates you will be provided watermarked images and that the watermark must remain during use.

It is not the same for retail customers. Retail customers buy images for personal use, not for commercial usage.
But, while it is hard to justify having a watermark on a digital image file on a disc of images intended for personal use printing, a watermark on a digital file intended for personal use online display isn't.
Here the issue is image resolution. A digital image file on a disc of images intended for personal use printing would have much more resolution than a digital file intended for personal use online display.

Visit www.asmp.org and on the left side of their Home page, click on Business Resources.
 

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