Watermarking Images for websites - please help me test this...

[Ruth Mills]

Hi, following on from several previous threads about geeks wanting to "watermark" images with a copyright message when putting them up on the Web to stop people from stealing them, I've been working on a web site that will let you do just that - hopefully without faffing about with graphics software or needing a PhD in computer science!

I've put a test site up at http://watermark.salonalchemy.co.uk/ - this will let you upload an image, specify some text to display on it, choose a font and set the size of the font - then when you click "Submit", a copy of the image will appear with the "watermark" text on it, which you can then right click on and save, so that you can then upload it to your Web site or whatever...

I'd recommend starting with a font size of 50 and then go for a smaller number if you want the text smaller, or a bigger number if you want the text bigger...

It's just a "proof of concept" so far though; I want to refine the way that the text appears on the image, and make it more flexible, e.g. by adding extra fonts, etc - but I would be really glad if people could have a play around with it, see if you can break it, and let me know what you think - I'd be particularly keen to hear of any improvements that I could make to this...

 

[Lellipop]

Ruth I cant get the link to work mate xxxxxxx
Right is working now

 

[Ruth Mills]

Ruth I cant get the link to work mate xxxxxxx
Right is working now

Is it working OK for you now?

 

[Lellipop]

Wow you clever thing works fine and a fab idea:hug:

 

[JackieMc]

Great idea and works fine here. Is it possible to move where the text goes as I've noticed in the past some 'stolen' pics have just had the copyright cropped off the bottom/top etc?

Jackie

 

[champagne]

Well done Ruth thats fab, but same Q as Jackie, need to move the font so its over the piccy.

Also how do i save the watermarked image?

You are very talented at this PC stuff.

Many thanks

Champagne x

 

[Ruth Mills]

Great idea and works fine here. Is it possible to move where the text goes as I've noticed in the past some 'stolen' pics have just had the copyright cropped off the bottom/top etc?

Jackie

Cool, I'll add a "tiled" option where it places more than one lot of text all over the image, and will also make it so that if you only want one lot of text, you can move the text so it's not just at the bottom too.

 

[Ruth Mills]

Well done Ruth thats fab, but same Q as Jackie, need to move the font so its over the piccy.

Also how do i save the watermarked image?

You are very talented at this PC stuff.

Many thanks

Champagne x

Cool, thanks, I'll add options to move the text around, and optionally "tile" text all over the image; to save the image you just right-click on it and select "Save" from the pop-up menu; I might also add a "Save" button though if that is easier...

 

[Ragdoll >^..^<]

This is fantastic ~ you are so clever :idea: cheers !

 

[Ruth Mills]

This is fantastic ~ you are so clever :idea: cheers !

Thank you

Well it's taken a lot of faffing about to get that far; at least I've proved the concept now though, so it should be a lot easier to refine it to make it prettier and more usable for people now. Probably won't get a chance to do that until sometime next week now though!

 

[oey]

Fantastic Ruth!

As said would be fab to be able to re-position the watermark but this makes life so much easier for me.

I did manage to watermark my picture once but it was a right Bl**dy faff! Havent been able to do it since so this is just fab for me.

When can we use it officially?

This is the one I just tried and took me about 10 seconds! :lol: :hug:

Salon Alchemy - Watermark Images

 

[Ruth Mills]

Fantastic Ruth!

As said would be fab to be able to re-position the watermark but this makes life so much easier for me.

I did manage to watermark my picture once but it was a right Bl**dy faff! Havent been able to do it since so this is just fab for me.

When can we use it officially?

This is the one I just tried and took me about 10 seconds! :lol: :hug:

Salon Alchemy - Watermark Images

If you like what it does now, then go ahead and use it! Alas you won't be able to paste a link of the pic of what you've just done though, as it only keeps a copy of the image in memory for one minute and then deletes it off the server - which is why you need to right-click the image and save it to your hard drive and then do what you want with it.

Like I said, I want to enhance it so you can change the position of the text - and also make the text look nicer than it does now - there should be a way of making it semi-transparent which would look an awful lot nicer - as well as adding an option so you can choose how opaque you want the watermark to be.

Would be great if people could continue hammering it, as I want to iron out any possible memory or resource leaks before I can deem it "production" quality - hopefully there aren't any but you never know!

 

[Nafia]

Nice idea, but I have to say that there is also software that can remove it if some one wants it. We think of images in a one dimensional way but the are not and pictures are layer and the just remove the layer that they don't want so i found out the hard way if they wont that picture the will use it. yo have to protect the photo so that it can not be save copied or dragged of a page.

 

[oey]

yo have to protect the photo so that it can not be save copied or dragged of a page.

Oooohhhh - so how do we do that then?!?!?!?! :lol: (can you tell I am not computer literate) :lol:

 

[Nafia]

Oooohhhh - so how do we do that then?!?!?!?! :lol: (can you tell I am not computer literate) :lol:

I found out from my friend that is computer literate that the site you work with has to be protected or buy the software that is really expensive because my friend told me that who is graphic artist this is how I know

 

[Ruth Mills]

Nice idea, but I have to say that there is also software that can remove it if some one wants it. We think of images in a one dimensional way but the are not and pictures are layer and the just remove the layer that they don't want so i found out the hard way if they wont that picture the will use it. yo have to protect the photo so that it can not be save copied or dragged of a page.

I guess so... although with the JPEG format, the image has to be collapsed into one layer when you save it, so it would take some quite advanced image software to remove the watermark afterwards, as it would have to "guess" what was underneath the watermark text.

I think there's also a "steganographic" way of watermarking images, where you can apply an *invisible* digital watermark to it too - that may be a possible area for future investigation...

As for "protecting" the photo so it can't be saved, copied or dragged off a page - most of the techniques for doing that use Javascript and as such can be circumvented by looking at the "Temporary Internet Files" folder and copying the image from there (or just turning Javascript off if you prefer)... alternatively you could just ALT-PrintScreen!

 

[Nafia]

I guess so... although with the JPEG format, the image has to be collapsed into one layer when you save it, so it would take some quite advanced image software to remove the watermark afterwards, as it would have to "guess" what was underneath the watermark text.

I think there's also a "steganographic" way of watermarking images, where you can apply an *invisible* digital watermark to it too - that may be a possible area for future investigation...

As for "protecting" the photo so it can't be saved, copied or dragged off a page - most of the techniques for doing that use Javascript and as such can be circumvented by looking at the "Temporary Internet Files" folder and copying the image from there (or just turning Javascript off if you prefer)... alternatively you could just ALT-PrintScreen!

Im just going by what a guy told me who works for microsoft told me Im no expert but he just should me how people can erase print of a picture im no expert but I am tired of finding my work on other sites that i went to him i found my modeling photos on an unsavory site after some one called about it and i had watermark those

 

[Seanny]

Kudos to you Ruth, a really imaginative and useful idea. A few small tweaks and I'd say you're onto a winner there.

Re somebody removing the copyright? It is possible, I've removed several of mine by redrawing in the missing parts over the text. I done it just to see if I could, it took me a lot of time and effort and definitely in my opinion would be a tough job to get the finished pic looking like the original especially under close scrutiny.

Nafia, sorry to hear about your pics being stolen by someone else, its happened to a few guys in here too, however I must confess that I've never heard of any software which can automatically strip a watermark from an image. Remember that once the pic is saved from Ruths test site back to the owners pc, the watermark is an actual part of the image. I'm wondering if your pics were protected in a kind of flash image gallery where the copyright image is stored in a layer over every pic in the gallery. If so, its a fairly simple job for an unscrupulous person to locate the source of the photos via the page code, go to the folder on your webspace where the photos are kept and steal whatever they want. Much better to mark all images before they go into the gallery as the layer copyright will only prevent 'right-click' thieves.

In any event, most thieves who steal pics from users of this site will more than likely be other nail techs, salon owners, etc, who are too lazy or not talented enough to take good photos themselves and are just looking for the simplest option available, if you mark your pics in any way, these lazy gits will move onto an easier target, ie, to someone who hasnt marked theirs.

Once again, well done Ruth!

 

[collin]

Ruth...

Refine the product and make it fool proof...protect it from being copied/ripped off etc...market it and I recon you could have a winner here :hug::hug::hug:

 

[stoney]

Everytime I try it says I cant use it because my photos not have JPG extention, but they do???? Help lol :lol: