Thursday, November 10, 2005

Adding Site Name to Images?

Just curious as to how many people add their web site name to their photos and the reasons for it. Is it to deter people from using it as their own? Has anyone noticed a decrease in people passing off photo's as their own, consequently?

I notice that most times the web site name is in the bottom/top corner and seems to be easily cropped out if someone were to want to copy it. Any thoughts?


This post was written by Alicat from Something So Clever


12 comments:

Guy said...

I did it for a while, had some fun. I did it to make sure people knew where it came from in case it was pulled from my site. I suppose if they wanted your image they could crop/edit your watermark out.
I stopped doing it because it was too darned tedious and the images didn't look as crisp after being through my watermarking program, even when I saved as a TIF.
I used Photo Watermark Professional and I could have been using it wrong, I don't really know. But going between 2 or 3 image editing programs was in excess just to post on Meathenge.

Biggles

Ziz said...

Andrew - Would you mind sharing about the Copyright notice with photoshop? I use Photoshop 7 but I've never seen anything like that. :)

Rachael Narins said...

My question is...do pictures really get nicked that often that it is worth the extra time? Has it happened to you Alicat?

Anonymous said...

awww...let em bite the photos...take it as a compliment ;) at least that's what i would do, but no one has ever wanted to borrow my ickie amateuw photos, lol!

Ziz said...

Rachel - Not that I know of. It's not like I think my photo's are work taking, but I've read plenty from other bloggers trying to stop that from happening. Is there any real way to know its been stolen, other than happening upon it?

Cybele said...

I've been having quite a bit of trouble with people hotlinking my photos late (resulting in a drain on my bandwidth of about 10% of my monthly usage).

I started doing the watermark on them, and then stopped, because it was too much trouble (and my site design is in flux). Also, I felt that it somehow "made it okay" to repost my photos (which are published under a rather flexible CC license).

I've since created an .htaccess file that replaces hotlinked images with a smaller sized blank "this image belongs to candyblog.net" to discourage such abuse.

At first I thought it would be flattering to have my stuff stolen, but now I don't think it's terribly fun. I am making no money on my site and spend money not only on the hosting, my new design and of course all the stuff I review.

It's one thing to use my photos but then to also use the bandwidth I'm paying for without a link back adds injury to insult (I've not gone over my hosting plan yet, but am approaching the max on it should my traffic double again).

Ziz said...

cybele - "I've since created an .htaccess file that replaces hotlinked images with a smaller sized blank "this image belongs to candyblog.net" to discourage such abuse. "

Does this mean that when they try to hotlink, that image will show up on THEIR site, or on yours?

Could you point me to a place that explains how to create such a file?

Also, how did you discover that people were hot linking? Through your stats pages?

Anonymous said...

Yes alicat, it switches the outbound file being linked. Here's a site with the htaccess code:

http://altlab.com/htaccess_tutorial.html

In Photoshop, the watermark is found under Ffilters>Digimarc>embed watermark.

By the way, if your paying for bandwidth overages, and you have your own domain, you should look into some of the cheap hosting plans that offer plenty of usage. I use Fatcow.com with 30 gigs a month for $99 a year. There are cheaper plans out there that can get you what you need if you shop around.

I had a gingerbread man picture stolen by almost a hundred xanga and myspace users during Christmas, and it barely made a dent.

Kevin said...

I started embedding my blog address in my photos when I started finding them elsewhere.

So long as no one is making money off of them I don't mind them being used, I just want credit.

Ziz said...

Thanks Paul, I will have to look into that tutorial. I haven't had the situation where all of the sudden I saw my images were taken, but I definitely want to try to deter that from ever happening.

Thanks so much for your help! :D

Ziz said...

Yep, sure does Andrew. I will try that out once I get my next pic to get ready for my site. :) Thanks so much!!

xlpharmacy reviews said...

I think this is so dangerous posting or putting photos on the the internet, we have to be really careful with those situations.