To Watermark or not....
I've seen friends do this, and friends not do this. As a blogger, or a professional, or just a family trying to protect your kids or your work, what do you think about Watermarking? Is it essential? Is it only essential for businesses? Is it essential for just ordinary 'family' bloggers like myself? I'd really like to know your thoughts on this. With all the craziness out there I've definately been considering it since I put so many photos out there are of my kids. Sometimes I just get caught up in, 'how cute' and don't really think about any consequence of putting all my pictures out their for everyone to see, or 'take'.
If you do watermark, would you watermark every photo? Just ones with the kids? Would you make sure it touches part of their face?
It seems like a lot of work, especially since I do not have a nice photo editor. I have a collage maker that really sucks, but does the job...just takes forever to find the correct pictures and it frequently shuts down on me. I used it to make this collage of Luna & it took me about 10 minutes. Photoshop would be great but is really expensive. Oh, maybe that will be the next thing I save for!
What a crazy world we live in, where we actually have to think of this. It sucks that people might steal pictures of you or worse, of your kids, but it happens. It must. That's why people watermark right? Just wondering what others out there do about the technology that we have access to, but especially the crazy people out there that have access to all the information and pictures on the web.
What are your thoughts? Do you watermark????? Or if you haven't started yet, is it something you've considered as well?
xoxo,
Maggie
I don't watermark. I thought the primary reason for watermarking is so that no one can profit from your images. I think that anyone using your images for nefarious reasons wouldn't be particularly concerned with a watermark but I don't really know. I blog the same way that you do but I put most of my photos on Flickr and only allow close friends and family access to that. It makes me feel a little better.
ReplyDeleteThere are a lot of free watermarking tools online. You could try one of those? We use Photoshop Elements. It's cheaper than the normal one but it def works for me! I make my girls photo albums that way. If you have PowerPoint you could use that for a SUPER easy and fast collage maker. You may even be able to watermark using that. You can with Word.
TW...I mostly don't add photos because I have a hard time positioning them in blogger. YOu should give me a tutorial sometime!
ReplyDeletethanks for the comments erica! Yes, come on over one morning and i'll show ya. it's pretty easy to get the pictures to line up if you're using blogger. xoxo
DeletePersonally, I would never post my children's pictures on the world wide web. In my opinion, the internet is a very dangerous place for little children's pictures. The children's pictures usually leads to some sort of information. Remember it is for all the world to see.
ReplyDeleteRight! In my post I did say that it was for all the world to see! And you're right, it sure is! Everything we do on Facebook etc is as well! People get access to our information so easily. Since living far away from family, keeping a blog and posting pictures is the best thing to do. So NOT posting isn't really an option for us at this point. It keeps my family in the loop! Thanks for the comment.
DeleteMaggie, I've always understand watermarking to be a way to prevent someone from using your pics without your permission. You usually see professional photographers do this. There are laws in the US that prevent people from using someone's photo without their permission ( for commercial/business purposes). in your case, I don't see why a watermark is necessary. If you were also selling your photos, I woud have a different opinion.
ReplyDeleteThat's what I always saw watermarking as too. However, recently I've seen people doing it on blogs (of course more 'professional' than mine). Thanks for the comment Gemma! ;)
DeleteI am also on the fence about watermarking. Because I'm such a small time blogger, I often think no one would really want to take my pictures anyway, but I know there are weirdo's out there.
ReplyDeleteAs far as photo editing goes, YOU HAVE TO TRY picmonkey.com!! It's an awesome FREE website that allows you to edit and make collages! It's super easy to use and I love it! Try it out and let me know what you think :)
I just checked it out pic Monkey, thanks! It seemed nice that you don't need an account. I would love to edit right from my computer, without having to 'upload' them to another site. But it looks like a good option. I do use Photobucket sometimes, but Pic Monkey seems pretty easy. thanks rebecca!
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