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Hi Jeffery - I hate to have to disagree with you, but this topic has been beaten to death in photo discussion groups for at least the past 5-10 years. The bottom line of these discussions is that including copyright, contact info, and similar metadata is essentially useless to prevent image theft. It is utterly trivial (ie, press one button) to remove such metadata using widely availble freeware programs (as well as PS, LR and more pro-oriented programs). Anyone who is serious about stealing images (eg, 3rd world microstock or postcard or t-shirt companies) has such programs. In addition, Facebook and some other social media companies completely remove ALL metadata (ie, both IPTC and Exif) on all images submitted and posted to their sites....I understand the fear of people stealing your images, that's why you can embed metadata into your image so no matter who saves it your information is still stored. ...
what if people screenshot, does metadata still works i dont thinks so, plus im doing website with that name , if someone likes photo how did they find this photographer?i can make watermark smaller i guess
ps thank u i learn metadata
Hi Jeffery - I hate to have to disagree with you, but this topic has been beaten to death in photo discussion groups for at least the past 5-10 years. The bottom line of these discussions is that including copyright, contact info, and similar metadata is essentially useless to prevent image theft. It is utterly trivial (ie, press one button) to remove such metadata using widely availble freeware programs (as well as PS, LR and more pro-oriented programs). Anyone who is serious about stealing images (eg, 3rd world microstock or postcard or t-shirt companies) has such programs. In addition, Facebook and some other social media companies completely remove ALL metadata (ie, both IPTC and Exif) on all images submitted and posted to their sites.
Relatively small watermarks are no better than metadata, because serious image thieves know how to use the clone stamp, content-aware fill, and patch tools as well as we do.
Large, intrusive watermarks certainly make it more difficult for such people, but, as you correctly point out, they can be visually intrusive.
The general concensus is that the only real way to prevent significant image theft is to down-rez images that you want to protect to only a few hundred pixels on the longest edge. This way, people can get a general idea of the content of your image, but will never be able to make money from marketing it under their name, either in digital or print form because the resolution is so low.
One final comment: Of course, there is a real benefit to wide-scale distribution of one's best images, particularly when one is just starting out and needs to build their reputation. In a perverse way, one can consider theft of a limited number of your images, particularly, if they have been widely sold, as just another way to build your reputation, since you can easily show true ownership when the time comes. When you are just starting out, the amount of revenue you will likely lose to image theft is negligible.
If you Google {watermark theft sitehoto.net}, you will see a large number of discussions of this topic, but I think I have correctly summarized them.
Cheers,
Tom M