Monday, February 13, 2012

Does anyone use any digital watermarking software?


I am creating a new website finally. I remember using Digimarc to embed a digital watermark in Photoshop on all images. It used to be free with Photoshop. I remember that Digimarc sent me a notice saying that it wasn't free anymore - so I dropped it. They want $49 a year to use it again. I wonder if any other people use it or know of any other digital watermarking software that doesn't involve an annual fee?

6 comments:

  1. I wouldn't pay it.
    Unless I'm missing something, it seems you could do that pretty easily with layers and the opacity control. Or simply make your online samples small enough, so that they are good for comping and online viewing and not much else.

    I'm also scratching my head over the small business tier that charges you 10x the basic fee and allows you 5x the number of uses.
    I guess it's not just the NY Times that takes us all for patsies.

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  2. I have played around with some "Freeware" most of them are only free for a short window then you have to pay. And for the most part they aren't great cause you can't very well customize the size and position on each piece easily.

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  3. Here's a free download called iWatermark. No idea if it's any good or not.

    http://softkumir.ru/cgi-bin/eng/soft.cgi?act=more&id=1225170713

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  4. Good find, Tim! As Matthew mentioned above, iWatermark is free for a limited time, but you might get a lot done before it expires. If anyone else is having trouble with the link above, iWatermark can be found here as well —along with a handful of reviews.
    http://download.cnet.com/iWatermark/3000-2192_4-46423.html
    I haven't tried it myself.

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  5. Chuck and Tim,
    Thanks for your input. iWatermark is a system that puts a visible watermark over an image. That is something that I can easily do in Photoshop - you just grey out an image or type, apply a layer blending mode, and then save that as an action - then you can batch apply this action to a whole folder of images.
    I am looking for an invisible watermark that doesn't hinder the viewing of the image but proves that it is my image and that I can search the web for instances of that image. Digimarc does this but at a heavy price. I wish that Digimarc would just charge $49 for the ability to watermark as many images as you want for as long as you want and then maybe charge you for doing web searches. I think they would get alot more people interested.
    I did find a company that lets you watermark your images - as many as you want for as long as you want for $49 but does not offer any online searches. It is called Icemark and is available here:
    http://www.watermarker.com/software-for-adding-invisible-watermarks/

    If anyone knows of any other watermarking tools - please let me know.
    Thanks

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  6. Hi there, you can try signmyimage - no annual fee and no restriction to number of images. F>

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