Watermarking digital images online

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Robin Sampson

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Jun 17, 2020, 6:07:50 AM6/17/20
to Norfolk Archives Network
Dear all,

does anyone have any experience of watermarking digital photographs or scans of their collections? Particularly for display on their websites or social media.

Please feel free to post your experiences and advice below!

Many thanks,

Robin

Peter Boggis

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Jun 17, 2020, 8:43:13 AM6/17/20
to Robin Sampson, Norfolk Archives Network
Hello Robin, if it’s any help, we at Fakenham Community Archive use quite an old version of Photoshop to create watermarks for our digital media; examples of which can be found throughout our website.

Best regards

Peter Boggis
Website and Archive Manager
Fakenham Community Archive
    





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Robin Sampson

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Jun 17, 2020, 9:38:07 AM6/17/20
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Dear Peter, 

many thanks for this, and the images on your website are fascinating. Do you have any advice or tips on how to create them that you would be happy to share?

best,

Robin





On Wed, 17 Jun 2020 at 11:07, Robin Sampson <ro...@norah-df.org.uk> wrote:
Dear all,

does anyone have any experience of watermarking digital photographs or scans of their collections? Particularly for display on their websites or social media.

Please feel free to post your experiences and advice below!

Many thanks,

Robin

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Peter Boggis

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Jun 17, 2020, 11:09:27 AM6/17/20
to Robin Sampson, Norfolk Archives Network

Hello again Robin, writing a description of how to do this without a series of illustrations might be difficult, so I think it’s probably best if I direct you to one of the many very helpful YouTube tutorials on the subject.


The video tutorial (see link below) explains the basic process quite clearly,

however conducting further searches will reveal several others on the subject, some more elaborate than others!


https://youtu.be/9JdSLNgXkDE


While photoshop is our preferred image processing software I dare say there are others which can produce satisfactory results.


Best regards

Peter



On Wed, 17 Jun 2020 at 14:38, Robin Sampson <ro...@norah-df.org.uk> wrote:
Dear Peter, 

many thanks for this, and the images on your website are fascinating. Do you have any advice or tips on how to create them that you would be happy to share?

best,

Robin
On Wed, 17 Jun 2020 at 11:07, Robin Sampson <ro...@norah-df.org.uk> wrote:
Dear all,

does anyone have any experience of watermarking digital photographs or scans of their collections? Particularly for display on their websites or social media.

Please feel free to post your experiences and advice below!

Many thanks,

Robin

--
You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups "Norfolk Archives Network" group.
To unsubscribe from this group and stop receiving emails from it, send an email to norfolk-archives-n...@norah-df.org.uk.

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Robin Sampson

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Jun 18, 2020, 4:09:01 AM6/18/20
to Norfolk Archives Network, ro...@norah-df.org.uk
Dear Peter,

thank you very much!


On Wednesday, 17 June 2020 16:09:27 UTC+1, Peter Boggis wrote:

Hello again Robin, writing a description of how to do this without a series of illustrations might be difficult, so I think it’s probably best if I direct you to one of the many very helpful YouTube tutorials on the subject.


The video tutorial (see link below) explains the basic process quite clearly,

however conducting further searches will reveal several others on the subject, some more elaborate than others!


https://youtu.be/9JdSLNgXkDE


While photoshop is our preferred image processing software I dare say there are others which can produce satisfactory results.


Best regards

Peter


On Wed, 17 Jun 2020 at 14:38, Robin Sampson <ro...@norah-df.org.uk> wrote:
Dear Peter, 

many thanks for this, and the images on your website are fascinating. Do you have any advice or tips on how to create them that you would be happy to share?

best,

Robin
On Wed, 17 Jun 2020 at 11:07, Robin Sampson <ro...@norah-df.org.uk> wrote:
Dear all,

does anyone have any experience of watermarking digital photographs or scans of their collections? Particularly for display on their websites or social media.

Please feel free to post your experiences and advice below!

Many thanks,

Robin

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You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups "Norfolk Archives Network" group.
To unsubscribe from this group and stop receiving emails from it, send an email to norfolk-archives-network+unsub...@norah-df.org.uk.

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david...@gmail.com

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Jun 19, 2020, 8:11:01 AM6/19/20
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Hi Robin

You can do this (and many other things) with a very simple to use image processing program called paint.net (PC only) which you will find on line.  It was originally developed by a US college team being mentored by Microsoft.  It can be downloaded totally free.  It's constantly being revised and updated.  To learn how to create watermarks, just type "paint.net" and "watermarks" into Google and look for the youtube videos. 

If you're more ambitious, you can purchase a fantastically capable and versatile program called Affinity Photo.  Affinity are a British software house, based in Nottingham.  If your both keen and quick, you can buy Affinity Photo for an absolute song of about £25 - a one-off payment.  Normally it's £50.  A lot of professionals are now starting to use Affinity Photo in preference to (the full) Adobe Photoshop software for which you need to pay a rather expensive monthly licence - which is why the full Photoshop program has a very limited market.  Both Affinity Photo and (the less affordable!) Adobe Photoshop require a bit of effort to learn - but it's well worth it.

I use both paint.net and Affinity Photo.  Each has a role in my image processing.  It all depends what I'm trying to do.

It's also worth being aware that scanned images or photographs sometimes need a bit of grey-scale adjustment- to keep the "output" image in broadly line with the appearance of the original.  Any image processing software (including all of the above) can be used to do this.  It just takes seconds to do - but please don't use any "auto" functions.  Always do this manually.

David Kirk
Wreningham

Robin Sampson

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Jun 24, 2020, 11:08:30 AM6/24/20
to Norfolk Archives Network, david...@gmail.com
HI David,

thank you for these very helpful tips. Hopefully this will be very useful for many of the other forum users!

best,

Robin

Charles Butcher

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Sep 22, 2020, 8:49:16 AM9/22/20
to Norfolk Archives Network, Robin Sampson, david...@gmail.com
As a variation on this, I'd suggest getting your web server to add watermarks "on the fly".

Watermarking images before uploading to a web server is an extra step in the workflow, even if you have an application that will do this batchwise. And it means you have to keep copies of both the original and the watermarked version.

Many content management systems can instead add a watermark automatically when preparing an image for display on the web. At Stanhoe Archive, for instance, I use a simple open-source CMS named Piwigo to display old photos. Although I haven't used this function, I'm pretty sure it can add watermarks automatically: see this note, which also gives sensible advice about other simple measures to combat copyright theft. (Piwigo's lead developer is French, which explains the quirky language).

I'd be surprised if WordPress didn't do the same, either out of the box or via a plugin. If you're not using a CMS, of course, then manual watermarking is probably the only way.

On the wider topic, does everyone know about reverse image searching to find out where your images might be being used? TinEye is one of the best-known services.

nr16tube

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Oct 1, 2020, 4:13:31 AM10/1/20
to Norfolk Archives Network, Charles Butcher, Robin Sampson, david...@gmail.com
Dear all

Photoshop can easily be used to add watermarks.

However it can also be used to 'optimize for the web' where just about everything is stripped out from the image file other than the image itself. Thus a high resolution image suitable for archive can be stripped out and shrunk in size, reducing it to perhaps a file size of 20kb. This is fine for website display and probably Facebook but much to small for third parties to print. A watermark is an embellishment to denote ownership but is often just a distraction.

Optimizing images for a website also reduces the whole site's file size, making it faster to load when viewed.

Hope this helps - and thanks for the tip about TinEye.

Charles
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