Photo watermarking

[Josh]

All,

As some of you may know, my wife recently got into photography. As such I am looking for a program to watermark her photos. I would like input from users who have experience with a program they can recommend. There are several programs out there which do this, but many appear to be single solution companies with very little in the terms of long term survivability. Any input is appreciated.

Thanks!

Josh

[Carol Haynes]

If she is using Adobe Photoshop there are professional plugins that are available (check the demo plugins on the installation disc). I haven't used them myself but they are somewhere to start. Not sure if they work with other PS plugin compatible apps - you would need to check the vendor websites.

[mouser]

Even if she is using photoshop, you might be better off with a standalone tool that could be used regardless of the source of the pictures.  There are some good ones but i don't have much experience with them. I'm curious to hear what others recommend. Maybe post a mini-review of the program you decide to go with?

[app103]

I would have to say that Digimarc is probably the oldest and most well known company for digital watermarking of photos, video, audio, PDF's, etc .

They should be around for quite awhile, since they have contracts with a number of states for providing secure drivers licenses, as well as some pretty big stock photo companies.

Paintshop Pro 7 even came with the plugin to add and read their watermarks, which should give you some idea of how long they have been around as a respectable company.

Their digital watermarks are not visible to the naked eye. They also allow a visible marking as well. Their hidden watermarks are supposed to resist manipulation, so they are not supposed to be easily removed from images. They also have a tracking service so you can see who is using your images online. Corbis uses their ImageBridge service to protect their images.

You have to pay for a subscription to get an ID from them to add your watermark to an image. Offsite backup and secure sharing is also part of the deal.

If that service is a bit more than you had wanted, they also have MyPictureMarc which is a little less heavy duty, but offers a lot of the same protections as the ImageBridge service. It's good for collections under 5000 images. They have a few different options packages ranging from $79/per year to $499/per year, depending on the number of images you want to protect and which services you need.

[Carol Haynes]

I think Digimarc is one of the options in Photoshop.

[Ehtyar]

The free FastStone Image Resizer is a batch image manipulation program. In the advanced options, you'll find a surprisingly comprehensive watermarking feature.

Hope this helps, Ehtyar.

[Curt]

FastStone Image Resizer is fine but has one strange weakness: it will not show hidden folders even when they are 'unhidden' and every other program that I have can see them.

[Ehtyar]

FastStone Image Resizer is fine but has one strange weakness: it will not show hidden folders even when they are 'unhidden' and every other program that I have can see them.

You could always report a bug...

Ehtyar.

[Curt]

- surely, I did  and who knows, maybe some day he will get to it. Actually, I told about the situation and merely asked if he will add the feature "show hidden folders".

[siouxdax]

This is true. I looked up Digimarc in the Adobe Help Viewer. I'm talking about CS3...

I think Digimarc is one of the options in Photoshop.

[nite_monkey]

So I guess there is more to watermarking than just sticking a picture in the bottom right corner of the picture, and then making it slightly transparent 

[Pyros9]

I've used Picture Shark in the past.  It works well, and it's free.

http://www.picture-shark.com/