DA Watermark

Seems that I have opened the proverbial can 'O' worms with this posting. If I have upset anyone in any way, I do apologize, certainly was not my intention. And I guess with almost 7000 members in this group, and over 6000 watchers, I as one co-founder can not make everyone happy. So I guess we will concede to agree to disagree on some key points. I just wanted to say in closing that as a professional print photographer since 1986, I have had my share of works being taken and stolen by someone. I can not calculate the cost of these thefts. And I understand that theft is going to happen, but, there are ways to protect yourself, on here and on any other websites, that does not destroy the beauty and aesthetics of your works. I am NOT saying that watermarks are not allowed, what I am saying is take the time, do some research and find out how to protect your works without destroying them. There are other ways than JUST a watermark to protect your works, especially in the digital age. Every photo I have on my DA account (which is my "play" account and not attached to my professional business) have a tag embedded in them that has ownership and copyright information in them. Along with my watermark it takes less than 30 seconds of time to insert and save each picture when all my post processing is complete. If someone posts a photo and claims it as their own I can extract the digital information and prove that it is in fact mine. Many of our modern processing programs are capable of doing this. It is placed in the same area of the photo as the date/time/camera/fstop/ etc is kept but it not displayed. You have to look for it to find it and it is redundant so it can not be easily removed.

So, think about what your art means to you and make your own decision as to what you need to do. There are other options than the DA watermark that are better and almost as easy.

Thanks for your time,

Rourke!