Watermarks

[Todd]

I'm 17 and I'm very serious about photography. As I'm getting more and more into event photography, more and more questions come up. This time, it was the first time I attended a concert to take pictures. I went to a friend's metal concert and took over 400 pictures. Many of them turned out to be pretty cool. I was excited because I want to get the word out there so that maybe people will eventually want me to be their concert/event photographer.

To the point though. I put the photos on Flickr and told my friend and his band about them. They put them all on MySpace and gave them to friends and etc... This is great! I'm really happy that they liked them and such, but they also gave me no credit whatsoever. No comment, nothing. The only thing that could possibly make people think I took them is my comment on their personal page where I gave them the photo link.

My question is, do you think I should use a watermark? Is it worth it? I don't want to pester people and I'm not the "give me my credit or else" type but I do want people to know that I took them so that if they want me to do something for them, I can. Please give me your opinion.

As a followup, if you do think it is worth while, how would I go about doing it? Are there programs that can batch watermark? Or even better, batch resize/watermark? Thanks!

[tim11]

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My question is, do you think I should use a watermark? Is it worth it? I don't want to pester people and I'm not the "give me my credit or else" type but I do want people to know that I took them so that if they want me to do something for them, I can. Please give me your opinion.
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Why not? I suggest you use a standard water mark at the corner of the image where it won't intrude so it really becomes eyesore.
I am all for watermark as long as it is not 1/3 the size of the whole image and right in the middle. Besides, the idea is for people to recognise your work only.

[JLV]

I agree. I often sign my photos. In Photoshop I created a brush stroke that is my signature.

lately, I also enter my name in the exif.

[SpecialK]

I would ask the band to give you credit if nothing else. Kind of late to ask for anything more.

TNB puts various styles of watermarks on all his images he posts here. You might ask him about it. He explained it in a thread that I can not locate at the moment.

http://www.dcresource.com/forums/showthread.php?t=7720&page=55

[p.du.v]

I agree. I often sign my photos. In Photoshop I created a brush stroke that is my signature.

lately, I also enter my name in the exif.
I've been searching around, specifically trying to find details on viewing or changing EXIF etc.
The S3 IS group on Flickr requires that your EXIF is viewable or such, and I have no idea how to go about doing this.

Would you mind clarifying how one goes about putting their name in the EXIF, or even how I'd go about viewing it, if it exists in my photographs please?

(I made up a border+signature in Photoshop, and have imported the jpegs and resized to fit the border. Then outputted a final jpeg. Does this destroy the EXIF? You can see what I did on my Flickr page if needs.)


EDIT: No matter about how to get the EXIF to show up, found out I need to "Save As", not save for the web. How do I manually add my name into the EXIF though please?

[JLV]

In PhotoShop select the photo and Exif info appears on the left. Click on the icon to the right of author and type in your name. To do a whole file, press [control A] (in Windows) that will select all, then do as above.

Edit: Correction the icon is to the left of Author, you type to the right.

[TNB]

TNB puts various styles of watermarks on all his images he posts here. You might ask him about it. He explained it in a thread that I can not locate at the moment.
I use Adobe CS2 to create various types and sizes of watermarks.

For example, when I post a "larger" (800x) photo to the forums, I usually place two watermarks--one darker watermark in the lower right hand corner and "usually" a more transparent watermark over the image itself. Although I realize having two watermarks may be distracting to some, it also helps prevent people from trying to remove the "lower" watermark as has been done to some of my photos in the past.

The slightly smaller photos on my website only have a single watermark in the lower righthand corner. However, the photos are slightly smaller than what I upload to the forums and are also more difficult to copy than those photos posted on the forums. Most of the time, I also enter copyright information into the Exif data (which is different from author since I am more concerned about copyrights, especially when I find my photos on someone else's commercial website).

The following photo was a slighly different variation, but that was simply because I thought the "red" matched the red hair.

http://image.rcuniverse.com/forum/upfiles/70716/Tr50346.jpg