Watermark photos?

[Slickone]

Is there a way to watermark photos for free? I'm talking about security watermarking that are invisible and can't be easily removed.

While I'm at it, what's a free watermarking app to create a semi transparent 'watermark' looking logo/text that you'd put in the corner of a pic (visible).

 

[Slickone]

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[Slickone]

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[Slickone]

No one watermarks their photos in any way, to either hide their info in them for security, or simply to place their visible name on the photo?

 

[DaveSimmons]

It's trivial to add a visible watermark layer in PhotoShop, but you insist on free.

A free image library like CxImage (or ImageMagick?) that supports alpha blending and some perl or C++ coding would let you do something similar if you're a coder.

 

[ntsf]

iirc, if you read up on the specs of the image format you're using, you may be able to manually add something to the image with a hex or text editor...

 

[Slickone]

Well I can do it in Paint Shop Pro, but it's too much work. I tried AiS Watermark Pictures Protector but didn't like it. Surely there's more than one app geared just for this.

 

[RussianSoldier]

Originally posted by: Slickone
Well I can do it in Paint Shop Pro, but it's too much work. I tried AiS Watermark Pictures Protector but didn't like it. Surely there's more than one app geared just for this.

yes, but many of them make visible watermarks instead...

 

[Slickone]

What apps? Like I said, I'm also looking for something that does that.

 

[Mark R]

As far as I know the only widely used invisible watermark system is Digimarc. It has the benefit of having it's decoder integrated in Photoshop, PSP and several other popular packages. Half the battle to prevent piracy is to inform the pirate that he is potentially being monitored, and Digimarc does that. Of course, digimarc is not free - you need to pay a significant annual fee to use it - especially if you are going to watermark more than a handful of images.

I investigated this a while ago, and there was some discussion about a free watermarking plugin for GIMP, but I don't think it was very good - from memory, saving the file as a JPEG would destroy the watermark beyond recognition.

 

[Zepper]

There are some programs for security, etc. that use the 'steganography' technique to hide large blocks of text in media files. Just go to sourceforge.org and search on the strange word above. SourceForge is a good place to look for free programs.
. For your other issue, just about any photo editing software should allow you to create a text layer or box that you can fix up with whatever kind of fx you want and then superimpose it on your pix. The Photo Impression 3 from ArcSoft that came with my scanner can do it. You probably want to start w/ your pix in some format other than .jpg but it should work either way.
.bh.

 

[Slickone]

Has anyone used any of the steganography apps, like steghide?

As far as the visible watermark, as I said, I can do it in PSP, but it takes a few steps, and you can't edit text (at least in 7.x), so if you want to change something, you have to re-do the whole thing. Someone mentioned using Ulead Photoimpact. I don't guess it's any easier (or Photoshop)?

 

[Zepper]

If you save your work in Photo Impression's internal format, it will preserve the layering for later editing. After editing, you just do a "Save As" into the format of your choice (.jpg, .tif, etc.) for distribution, which will merge the layers.
.bh.

 

[Slickone]

That's not the same problem I was referring to.

 

[Slickone]

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[Slickone]

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