Do you watermark your photos?

[Foroux]

I take care of a hobby website for my aunt's amateur photography. I make sure to credit her in the information below the photograph but I don't paste a watermark across the picture itself. In my opinion, the watermark would detract from the depicted scene. But, another photographer thinks it's an invitation to have the pictures stolen. What do you think?

 

[JackD]

I agree with the other photographer. Too many unaware or maybe even uncaring about copyrights and ownership. Then when Google or Bing indexes the image and now others doing image searches for their websites some (maybe most) don't even look for the source of the image to see if it's protected or not. Just grab the photo and go. Watermark it on the website then if the visitor to the website wants to see better, have the link look to a section where the photo is not watermarked and the folder is marked to not allow indexing. It's not a foolproof setup but at least a good attempt and protecting copyright.

 

[Foroux]

Thank you for the help, JackD. I'll give this a try. It would be infuriating to have your work stolen and I sure would feel terrible if it was me who let it happen. Thanks for the tip!

 

[tulip]

I agree with the other photographer. Too many unaware or maybe even uncaring about copyrights and ownership. Then when Google or Bing indexes the image and now others doing image searches for their websites some (maybe most) don't even look for the source of the image to see if it's protected or not. Just grab the photo and go. Watermark it on the website then if the visitor to the website wants to see better, have the link look to a section where the photo is not watermarked and the folder is marked to not allow indexing. It's not a foolproof setup but at least a good attempt and protecting copyright.

I would definitely go with this suggestion because as much we cannot completely control copyright infringements, a lot more can be done to minimize them.