Watermarks: good or bad

We live in a world where you must protect what is yours. So what lengths do we go to protect what is ours? Photographers have long fought the good fight to protect their images. With the simple right-click of a mouse an image can be copied and used without the owners permission. The ease photography can be poached requires all photographers to decide "Do I alter the image to prevent copying at the cost of image quality?"

The most common form is known as a water mark. Its a simple thing with potentially big consequences both good and bad. Its nearly impossible to place a watermark on an image that will protect the image and it be unobtrusive. If the mark is placed in a corner it can often simply be cropped out. 

Below is an example of using your name with reduced opacity for a water mark. 

You can see that the water mark must be placed in a strategic location that can't be cropped out. This location usually has at least some impact on the beauty of the image. The mark can be faded almost to invisibility but must remain slightly visible to do it's job.

If you are steadfastly against marking the image another method presents itself. You can post a reduced size(resolution) of the image. When it is copied the result is grainy and small. You have the benefit of a clean image without text or logo's faded into the background but maintain security in that what the copier gets is not useful.

Below is an example of a reduced resolution image.

You can see by comparing the two images this one is slightly blurry and grainy compared to the full resolution image above. The example image was reduced from 1500 pixels wide to 400 pixels which represents a little over 1/3 the original size. When copied it will only produce a thumbnail size image that can't be used for anything much more that exactly that, a thumbnail. Even with the reduction the viewer can get a nice look at the image.

Each imager has to decide for himself if protecting the image is worth the cost of altering it. I personally have never been overly concerned with protection. It's always been a hobby I wanted to share freely with both friends and public. It's usually be more important to me how good the image looked to the viewer than if it could be copied.

I stand by the philosophy that if you don't want it copied, don't put it on the internet...just my 2 cents worth.