What is the deal with every website on the face of the earth putting their craptastic watermark on every photo they publish? Fine, if you style yourself a photographer and actually took the photo, I get it. But if the photo came from a public source, or a vendor, or actually belongs to someone else, I have to say, “wtf?”. I’ve even seen multiple watermarks on the same photos.
Its starting to encroach on the tactical industry. What do you guys think? Has watermarking gone too far?
Tags: Douchebaggery
I don’t find it annoying, but I don’t do it.
Everybody wants to channel visitor flow to their web site instead of competetitors. I think it’s understandable. I mean it’s the world of capitalism, commercials and those things… But as a consumer I’ve come to the point of being disgusted by the wildness of this trade. Watermarks are just a minor thing though.
holy crap, what are the chances that two people with the same name commented a few minutes apart?
I think it has to do with bandwidth and advertising profits. Someone links a photo from a blog on barfcom, thread gets thousands of view and the blog gets hit on bandwidth for every view but can’t recoup costs because no one actually visited the blog.
Personally I like it as long as the watermark is unobtrusive. It allows me to see if there are any other photos or information from the original source.
I would never watermark someone elses image as its not mine. However I watermark all of my images because they get a ton of hits off of image searches and forums. Just helps people find out where they came from so they may find more of the same. Now if my image was on someone elses blog with their watermark on it I would not be as happy. I also think some blogging software allows for all images to be watermarked by the software which might also effect this.
Really? Watermark photos you didn’t take with your camera or pay to have someone else take for you? Lame. I can see the mindset, but why lay claim? Also, I think it takes away from the image itself altogether.
In regards to images of products for sale. Our policy is to watermark any image that we generate ourselves, whether it be a photo, or combining images in photoshop for our purposes (like a knife and its sheath in the same image). My company strives to have the most accurate depiction of the actual product available as possible.
I learned early-on that other retailers would use google image search to find product images. In many instances, these retailers were not factory-direct or otherwise authorized dealers, so they did not otherwise have access to the good images from the password protected dealer image sites.
Since we see our efforts as an investment in the quality of our site, we don’t want someone else coming along and simply “grabbing” it.
In regards to guys like “Stickman”, his stuff is art, and should be signed somewhere.
As someone who has had his work stolen before, I can’t even fathom the cheek of someone watermarking work that isn’t their creation. Just incredible.
Also, pretty good evidence that they did take someone else’s work with intention of passing it off as as their own. Good luck defending that should the time come, genius.
I’ve had this done to me. I generate all the original photography of my work for the website and blog. I know of at least two instances where people have pulled images for commercial purposes. Interestingly enough, that went hand in hand with design IP infringement. Both parties have claimed that they thought the design was “open source” and that use of the photographs was an “accident.” In one instance, a photo off of Soldier Systems was downloaded, renamed and put up on a website. The offending party claims to have missed the post under which it was attributed and denied changing the original file name which also had this information.
I have zero tolerance for that. If you didn’t originate the IP, don’t fucking use it. If you didn’t generate the image, don’t fucking use it.
I know we have had photos re-cropped to cut out the watermark and then passed on as someone else’s.
I’ve seen some good and some really bad watermarks. Those HUGE ones all across the photo is just lame.
Had many of my photos re-cropped and a new watermark added so they can throw them up on their site or blog as there’s. Seen companies not only copy a product, but also take the picture off the competitors site and use it as their own twice now. Even had someone cut and paste word for word off my site and on to theirs.
When watermarking interferes with the picture image itself, meaning what the pictures shows, with all the watermarking going all over the detail of the image it is annoying.
I mean whats the point in showing something unique and new if it all obscured with a large half see through watermark so you cant see the details at all, that pisses me off as well.
bullcrap. If the product isn’t yours or you didn’t claim it, there’s no reason to put your name on it.
this isn’t tumblr.
sorry, I meant to write, **if the product isn’t yours or you didn’t take the photo**
As both a retailer and a reseller we do not watermark images, the images of the products are supplied by our suppliers, any we take ourselves and we release into the media stream we ask for a credit when officially released which will then link back to our site, there is little point in watermarking images that can simply be duplicated by a one eyed photographer.
cutting and pasting descriptions is not a good idea as google will see the older content as primary and the copied content and a duplicate – thus lowering the rank of the duplicated content.