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55 lines
2.7 KiB
ReStructuredText
.. title: Watermarking or how to destroy your work
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.. slug: watermarking-or-how-to-destroy-your-work
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.. date: 2014-10-09 06:58:10 UTC+02:00
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.. tags: watermarking, distribution
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.. link:
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.. description: Watermarking or how to destroy your work
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.. type: text
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.. author: Alexandre Dulaunoy
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.. _tag: https://www.flickr.com/photos/adulau/14994494530/
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.. figure:: tag.jpg
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:alt: Ma soif de savoir est...
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Ma soif de savoir est..., ƒ/2.5, 50mm, tag_ on flickr
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While visiting a recent photo-club exhibition, I saw watermarking on a
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vast majority of the printed art works presented. This is really
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disturbing not only for your eyes but also the concept itself of adding
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some text on top of your work.
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While asking the members of the photo-club, they told me this is
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recommended practise to "protect" their work. I think "protect"
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in their view means limiting the distribution of their picture.
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Indeed, when you look at a picture with a watermark below
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distracts your view, your mind and then, it's just distracting
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from seeing the picture. So you tend to move away from the watermarked
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pictures and concentrate on the pictures without watermark. At the end,
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I was more interested in the work of someone having an interesting
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set of negative-space pictures without any distracting marks or tags.
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Then one member of the photo-club told me that everyone was really
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attracted by those minimalist pictures. Indeed the pictures were nice
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and well done but I think the factor of water-marks for the other
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pictures is not to under estimate. People focus on the pictures
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who attract their eyes (and their brain), this is very human. If you add
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some complementary factors, your work is less accessible and by so you'll
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get less potential viewers. Especially adding water-marking on art works in an exhibition
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doesn't make sense.
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For watermarked images on Internet, it's exactly the same. People tend to
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move away from the watermarked images. If they search for an image or a topic
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in an image search engine, they will see a whole list of pictures. They won't
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select/click on the ones having a clear message for them and not the ones
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with random text on top of the images.
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If you are afraid of someone use or reuse your work, the best is to publish
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your work. The more your work is known and attributed to you, the more you protect
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your work. The watermarking basically does the opposite, limiting the distribution
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and especially the possibility to reinforce the attribution to your work. The more
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viewers you have, the more potential attributions you might have.
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My work is freely licensed under the CC-BY-SA license (or even the GNU GPL license)
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and the non-visible watermarking is in the meta-data (EXIF).
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I don't like watermarks, what about you?
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