Dear Bloggers, More proof on why you should watermark your photos…
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Are you watermarking your photos? If not, you should be….
I did not start watermarking on a regular basis until I had been blogging for about a year. I’ve gone back and watermarked a few of my more popular posts and tutorials, but didn’t bother with everything. There were just too many and some of the photos weren’t great. I never would have thought someone would want to steal a photo that was taken in bad light or just not very good.
Well, I was wrong! People will steal anything! Case in point, my meatloaf stromboli recipe. It was an original and semi creative idea, and I guess that is what the thief was looking for…
I came across my photo on pinterest and noticed it was linked to something else, though that link was dead. So I used google’s reverse image search to track down the thief.
Look at how many comments, likes and shares this guy got off my picture:
The worst part is, this guy just made up a similar recipe to go with the photo and quite a few of the comments were that the recipe failed. Of course it is going to fail if you don’t follow the right recipe. (I used refrigerated pizza crust and leftover meatloaf.) I know he made it up, because he thought the dark things in the picture were olives, but they were actually lentils I had hidden in our meatloaf.
Of course this is nothing compared to some of the stories I have heard, but I am still very annoyed!!! I am going try to figure out how to report this to facebook, but we all know how facebook is…
Anyway, I use photoshop elements to edit my pictures and I have created a brush to add my watermark. Here is the tutorial I used to figure out how to do that.
And if you don’t use photoshop or photoshop elements, here are a few other tutorials and methods you can use to watermark your pictures:
Watermark all your photos at once using free software
Using a program called Visual Watermark
Using Picmarker (I don’t know about others programs, but this one will watermark your facebook photos too)
Now, go watermark your pictures!!! (Let’s be sure to help others, spread the word by pinning this or give it a tweet or + on google!)
If you like this type of project and want to see more, you can follow along using the Google Friend Connect widget, through a reader, or signing up via email. Just click on one of the icons below:
I will be linking up to some of the linky parties listed here.
F*** off with this bull****. If you watermark a photo go f*** yourself. If you don’t want people stealing it get a f***ing copyright. Who gives a s*** how many reposts or likes he got? It doesn’t help him! The only thing you are doing is being selfish and nagging about useless s***.
Oookaaayyy… I normally delete comments like this, but I just edited it for profanity to entertain anyone else who is reading these comments.
It’s my photo, I can watermark it if I want too. I am not being selfish, only smart to protect my property and income. (Yes, I make a part-time income with this website.)
Also, I don’t need to “get a copyright” as my
The watermark just gives me one more level of protection. Sure, it can be cropped out, but that is one more step that the infringer has to go through and once they have modified my work, it will only help my case if I were to seek damages.
~Jamie
Saw this on the Fruga Days blog hop. I used to not care about my pics (I'm just a random nobody with a very small blog following). But now that I have a child, I think twice than thrice about the pics I post. Thanks so much for the tips and I'm so sorry the copying happened to you!
I never watermarked my photos until i started noticing some of my images on facebook profiles and some websites.I was overwhelmed by this, watermarking images individually was a tiresome task, so i searched the web and found out about a tool called Mass Watermark. It is a great tool that can be used to process batches of images, but not free$30.I have been using this tool for a while great speed and very easy
Thanks for sharing this. I find this so infuriating. It is really hard to stay ahead of the thieves. I can tell by my analytics that they are searching my site. I just am not sure what they are doing with yet.
That is so bad! I'm really grateful that you shared this at the Say G'day Saturday linky party. I am featuring it this weekend! Hope you can stop by, say g'day and link up again!
Best wishes,
Ugh, I can't believe that happened! Thanks for sharing, We would love it if you would link up at our linky party, We hope to see you there!
I really need to start doing this!
Thanks for your tutorial. I started a new blog since we are discontinuing my paid service and this is something I've started to do with all my pictures since reading your post… and that font is so cute!!
Just to add one to the list…
I use PhotoScape, and they have an option to "add object." This "object" can be an image, and I have a logo image I use. (You can change the opacity, too.)
I suspect that the watermarks on some of my pictures could be cropped out if someone really wanted to do that. But I also am not willing to totally wreck a picture in the interest of its not being stolen. (Well, unless it's a picture of my child. Then I might!)
Oh Dear…. I just never think that anyone is going to want my photos… plus I put a frame on them. NOW I have seen buttons that I designed over the years on someone else's blog. That was pretty rude. I will reconsider for sure. I'm sorry that happened to you.
Thanks for the tip!
~Liz
The brush tip is great! Will follow the tutorial 🙂 Thanks.
-Lora
Good Afternoon Jamie, I am so sorry to hear about your dreadful experience. I suppose the problem is, we expect people to have the same values as we do and of course the world is not made that way.
The watermark tip is a good one, which I have been doing for a while. I am going to take your advice and go back to watermark my earlier photos….. even though they are not brilliant.
Jamie, I have enjoyed my visit and I have become a new follower. When I have finished writing to you, I am going to read some more of your posts.
I would like to invite you to visit me at Ivy, Phyllis and Me! when you have the time. It will be lovely to see you there.
Best Wishes
Daphne
Wow–that's crazy! It blows my mind that people will actually do such a thing. I put my blog name on most pictures, but now that I think about it, most of them could be cropped out if someone really wanted to. I need to rethink the way I'm doing it. Thanks so much for the important reminder!
~Abby =)
Thanks so much for sharing. My pics are not that great and it never dawned on me that someone would steal those. I guess I am going to try water marking them too. Thanks again for the info.
Found you at Chef in Training and thank you so much for sharing! I've known about watermarking your photos but never realized how important this is. I'm so sorry this happened to you but I will definitely try to take this lesson to heart! Thanks for sharing!
New Mrs. Adventures
Great reminder! I didn't start doing this until recently and now you've given me a great reason to go back through. Thanks.