It seems there are quite a few cases in which people copy photos (not watermarked) from open websites and publish them elsewhere under their own name, whether to show off or for profit.
The question is if there is a tool that would allow to pick a picture and ask for a search for an identical one.
I have thought this would be available under Google Images but the search there seems to be based on file names.
Charity, it is a technique which allows you to add over the photo a faint mark, thus stopping others from assuming the photo as theirs. Property protection. Most photo editing software has this capability, which is important to professionals. On the other hand, it slightly "marks" the photo, and in some cases professionals would avoid this method if they wish to present the photo at its best quality.
Thanks, Doru. I've seen some photos on B&B websites that have the company name over the picture--making it hard to see the picture. I assume there are watermarks that aren't so obtrusive.
Charity
Posts: 1918 | Location: Santa Barbara, CA, USA | Registered: 11 May 2003
The question is if there is a tool that would allow to pick a picture and ask for a search for an identical one.
Here is an article that appears to indicate that such a capability is in its very early infancy.
Apple supposedly has face recognition in its latest version of iPhoto. Here is one article about it, but it seems to need a lot of training to work. That isn't really what you are talking about, Doru, but just another example of a programming attempt to identify a picture from the image, not a label. It's a very difficult thing to do!
Thank you, Roz! I can't figure why I thought one could use Google Images to perform such searches. But it is good to know that there are people interested in such projects. I think such function will become available sooner or later, at least as a commercial investigative tool, because of all the intellectual property theft that goes around.
Why you thought Google could do it is because they have been experimenting with it in their 'Google labs'. They made the it available in April so it has been in the news recently.
I looked at it a little bit yesterday. I didn't fully figure it out. You may want to do some searches to find out more about it. I found blog post from a user experimenting with it.
I'd be interested in finding out if it works for you.
You can watermark your photographs by bringing them up in a good photo editing software (like PhotoShop Elements), making a new layer, and then choosing the text command to insert whatever text you want anywhere on that layer. Then you cut down the opacity of that layer to about 20% or so. Then you output the image as a JPEG. You end up with a flattened image with a faint writing on it that, if you've done it right, doesn't obscure too much but is darned near impossible to get out.
There are some programs that can watermark images automatically, but if you want complete control you have to follow the above method.
As a professional photographer, I can tell you that image theft is epidemic, especially in Russia and Communist China, and other former Soviet Bloc countries.
You can find huge amounts of info on watermarking, image theft, travel photography, and all sorts of other photographic concerns on www.photo.net .
I have been searching for such a tool and have been playing around with Picasa and iPhoto, but no success on anything except facial recognition.
I had hundreds of blog stories and photos stolen from my blog in the last month. I successfully defeated those thieves with the help of Google. One website was in Turkey (Google redirected all of their traffic) and one was in Egypt (running Adsense to try to profit on ad clicks from posting my content).
I watermark COPIES of photos that I consider to be pretty good ones, reduce the size, etc. to make jpegs. That resolution is fine for online use, but not for prints.
It's almost impossible to stop the theft. I use Google Alerts to be notified any time my byline (built in to all of my stories) shows up anywhere else... and, you'd be surprised how often the content is stolen.
All that said... if your content/photos are being displayed within Javascript... not searchable.
I am coming a bit late to this, as I have not seen this discussion until now. But i hope this information is useful all the same. One the website I had all my photos watermarked with a logo. There are numerous products on the web that can do this but I now use just eh normal photo manipulation programme add a layer and reduce size and opacity to suit. Sometimes feathering the edges too. But I have found only one software that allows you to electronically watermark your photos and then track the usage of them on line. I have no connection with the company and to be honest I think it is rather expensive. https://www.digimarc.com/
.
!
