23 ms·

Getty's New Watermark

• ojilles 14y ago
  Another site that takes IP address to force the language, even after chaning it back to .com. Sigh.
  • ben0x539 14y ago
    I don't even have a non-english language listed in my browser preferences. Apparently they expect people to use their javascript widget to select a home country, and then send you to e.g. http://www.gettyimages.com/Creative/Frontdoor/NewWatermark?Language=en-US http://www.gettyimages.com/Creative/Frontdoor/NewWatermark?L...
    • Wilya 14y ago
      This links redirects me to the local language version with the Language=mylanguage in the url. This is beyond annoying.
      • cookiecaper 14y ago
        What kind of redirect is used? Maybe you can get around it by blocking scripts.
    • pbhjpbhj 14y ago
      It sent me to the en-GB language page (correctly) but I have noscript on so I'm guessing they did that via browser header, the selection in the top-right showed "international" though. FWIW http://www.gettyimages.co.uk/Creative/Frontdoor http://www.gettyimages.co.uk/Creative/Frontdoor apparently gives some details about the server, the directory structure and the auth system in place that might not be worth exposing to external IP addresses.
• geetee 14y ago
  Why not have the info box AND a real watermark?
  • greghinch 14y ago
    What would the point be? I think this brilliantly satisfies the requirements of a watermark while also achieving a simple usefulness. This is where design reaches its peak, when functional requirements, practical use, and pleasing aesthetics meet. Well done Getty
  • shortformblog 14y ago
    By making it minimalist, they're attempting to make it so that it doesn't intrude on the photos. So, that way, if someone, say, shares the photo on Pinterest, it isn't a total loss for them. I can see the theory behind not giving it so much noise.
• ben0x539 14y ago
  If see a thing of the form <three letters>.<two letters that aren't a country I know>/<newline><huge number>, it doesn't really occur to me that it's supposed to be a URL. Doesn't help that in their big example image, the "gt" of gty.im kind of blurs into the bright bit of the image it is laid over. Apart from the pet-peeve of the missing http:// http://, is splitting URLs across lines a thing now?
  • ceol 14y ago
    I dunno. I immediately saw it as a URL, because honestly, what else would it be?
    • megablast 14y ago
      I thought it was a product code.
      • justincormack 14y ago
        Any decent product code should be a URL...
      • whatusername 14y ago
        It's both.
  • Sparragus 14y ago
    Getty Images is all over the web. And while initially it might be like you say, I think it will eventually become some sort of branding that people will learn to use.
  • there 14y ago
    http:// http://? What's that? My Firefox and Chrome don't show that.
    • mistercow 14y ago
      It's a functional programming thing; stands for "Haskell Time To Party". It might sound funny, but it is very, very serious and esoteric.
• techietim 14y ago
  I just typed in the address listed on the sample image and, due to the contrast between the text and the image, mistook it as "gly.im". Did anyone else notice this?
  • callmevlad 14y ago
    I noticed the same thing. The typeface choice makes it easier to confuse "t" and "l".
• bpowah 14y ago
  What do they do for almost-white images? Hopefully at some threshold they switch to black test. Even at that, a black/white tiled checkerboard image would leave the url illegible. They should have outlined the white text in black. Also, it looks fairly easy for an "unfair use"-er to "heal" the watermark away. They should consider a watermark with higher entropy. (like a stipple-shaded box or one with subtle random variation in shade around the box edge.)
  • mceachen 14y ago
    Looks like the background is adaptive: http://www.gettyimages.com/detail/photo/chiufen-village-high-res-stock-photography/144772363 http://www.gettyimages.com/detail/photo/chiufen-village-high...
  • bpowah 14y ago
    Yes, they clearly thought thru the white-image issue: http://www.gettyimages.com/detail/photo/ice-extreme-close-up-royalty-free-image/78314149 http://www.gettyimages.com/detail/photo/ice-extreme-close-up... The box is just a low-contrast region (not adaptive). But I still think there will be lots of conditions where it will be tough to read. http://www.gettyimages.com/detail/photo/chess-board-royalty-free-image/136492703 http://www.gettyimages.com/detail/photo/chess-board-royalty-...
  • AndrewNoNumbers 14y ago
    You, sir, are clearly thinking like an engineer.
  • miahi 14y ago
    You don't really need a higher entropy. It's enough to have a strong enough shade, so the shaded part loses enough color information that when you undo the shade that part looks posterized. That way an "attacker" needs to work a lot more on the picture, as it's not easy to add the lost color information again without adding a blur to that part.
  • grkvlt 14y ago
    If you register and log in, you get a watermark-free image. It even suggests this on the image info page...
• deleted 14y ago
  [deleted]
  • corin_ 14y ago
    What better solution do you have, there's no way to make an image file hold a clickable link. And the URL isn't meant to be an advertisement, it's not meant to "entice" you, it's meant to be an easy option for if you already want to go to the place where you can buy, or get more information about, the image.
    • robterrell 14y ago
      "there's no way to make an image file hold a clickable link" Not true since the days of TIFF. JPEG has application-specific tag and Exif data. PNG files are often abused to contain non-image data (i.e. Adobe Fireworks stores vector data after the end of the image). Even GIF files have a comment field! So, stick the hyperlinks links inside JPEG tags. Use Exif so others can read them. Or make a Photoshop plugin that will display them and let the user click on them. You could also stick the tags in using steganography, which is more in line with how a "watermark" should work.
      • corin_ 14y ago
        None of those ways are widely-enough used, the solution needs to be such that more than just a few people can a.) realise the link is there and b.) work out what it is.
      • tedunangst 14y ago
        The watermark is designed to be visible. You should know it's there without having to check for it. Additional meta data in exif data could be useful. Maybe they even have it, but since it involves more tools than looking at the image in my browser, I don't know if it's there or not.
    • m_for_monkey 14y ago
      "... there's no way to make an image file hold a clickable link." A QR-code is very close, though...
• billpatrianakos 14y ago
  Wow, as of this writing the vast majority of comments are just so negative! Do we have to hate on everything? I like it! It looks way less tacky than their old watermark. In fact, it actually makes the photos look better compared to the old watermark and others' watermarks. They did a great job and they're not dummies. I'm sure a lot of thought went into how this would look or change when it was laid over light, dark, or patterned photos. Kudos to them. Getty Images preview photos now look way more attractive.
  • StavrosK 14y ago
    I don't know what all the negativity is about, I think it's a brilliant move that both serves its purpose for Getty, gets them more eyes to the actual images and is less of an eyesore and more informative to the viewer than just a logo.
    • billpatrianakos 14y ago
      I hate start meta discussions about HN but I think the negativity has a lot to do with the community changing a bit around here. The thread about DuckDuckGo a few days back exemplifies this and there was a discussion of it just yesterday. Basically, people want to be heard and the best way to do it is to be a contrarian. A few years back I joined HN and was so intimidated by all the smart people here that it took a long time before I started commenting. Now, if you're not paying attention it's easy to mistakenly assume that the smart people "know better" and will comment with their opinions on how they'd do XYZ better. A lot of the threads I saw back then had people giving contrarian opinions and getting lots of attention for it. So for the newbie it's most likely easy to assume that's how things are done around here and that's how you prove your intelligence/expertise. But the thing is, what often looks like a contrarian view is often a question or an alternative way to do XYZ that isn't really saying XYZ is bad or wrong at all. So I think it's a case of monkey see monkey do mixed with a misunderstanding of popular comments, who their authors are, and missing context. Everyone wants to be the smartest person in the room. HN can be an intimidating place because of how seriously exceptional a lot of people around here are. Hell, I still feel like a moron half the time when I comment. Egos get in the way of accepting that instead of being the smartest you should learn from the smartest and seeing that you don't have to say anything at all. In fact, saying nothing is often the smartest thing to do. How does that saying go? Something like "Shut up and let people assume you're stupid instead of opening your mouth and confirming it"?
• kibwen 14y ago
  This watermark takes up way too much of the image, but I suppose that's the whole point; they don't want to make it easy to crop out the attribution. This may seem like an intractable tension, but I don't think it necessarily has to be--at least not in the following situation: 1) The content creator cares more about attribution than monetization. 2) The content sharer cares more about sharing unobstructed images than about passing off the content as their own original creation. In this case, there could be some sort of standard metadata that accompanies the image and is only displayed upon some user interaction, such as a mouseover. We could even use steganography[1] to do this right now, without needing to settle upon a new image format. I realize this is a bit too idealistic to be taken seriously. Just interesting to think about, is all. [1] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Steganography http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Steganography
  • JimmyL 14y ago
    For these images, the content creator is Getty ("they" didn't press the shutter button, but they paid for the shoot and own the images) - and they certainly care more about monetization than attribution.
  • igouy 14y ago
    SignMyImage -- Protect your images from copying by invisible watermarking. http://www.adptools.com/en/signmyimage-description.html http://www.adptools.com/en/signmyimage-description.html
  • jonhendry 14y ago
    "1) The content creator cares more about attribution than monetization." I wouldn't bet on that, if you're talking about a professional photographer.
• gbog 14y ago
  I don't like it. There are three purposes mixed in this "watermark": a) Give the innocent viewer a way to know the name of the photograph and go the original source of the image, maybe to buy the picture. b) Make it harder for less-than-innocent people who want to take these images and use them for illustrative purposes without people noticing they did not actually take these pictures. c) Inject a fingerprint in these images so that can serve as a proof of ownership in case of legal issue, and that may also help crawling the web searching for them. For a), it seems much preferable to have a classic caption, where more useful information may fit (date, place, etc) For b), with my limited gimp skills, I guess I would need 30 minutes to remove the watermark the first time, and then it would take 2 minutes. For c) I suppose a real invisible watermark is actually much harder to erase and a better proof of ownership, but maybe they do add such a fingerprint also? Anyway, I see here yet another contradiction of DRMs: content provider want more and more people accessing their content for free, but they also want, at the same time, this access to be unpleasant enough so that these users would buy the paid content. I don't think this scheme will survive in the long-term.
  • shortformblog 14y ago
    You realize that Getty Images used to have much uglier watermarks, right? Example: http://dl.dropbox.com/u/58607934/stuff/getty.jpeg http://dl.dropbox.com/u/58607934/stuff/getty.jpeg So in other words, option b and option c has always been on the table. However, we're in an era where images are becoming much easier to share on other platforms. All someone has to do to share a picture these days is to pin it or post it on Tumblr. All that metadata gets stripped when people do that. At least with this, people know where to find it. Considering the changes in sharing images, why wouldn't Getty want to take advantage of this? That way, if people are going to share them anyway, at least it isn't a total loss to them — and hey, people might even be more likely to share them because it doesn't have a supremely ugly watermark. Media outlets pay $100 — each — for many of these photos. This a big business for Getty, so they need to protect it. Now, Getty could do things to make it easier for smaller entities — say, bloggers — to take advantage of this. This feels like a good, if imperfect, compromise. Now you might be willing to use GIMP to modify a photo, but most people won't. It's why Adobe can charge $600 for Photoshop. Too expensive? You're not their target market. This isn't to say there's not a better way, but it just feels like we're wringing our hands over what seems to be a good-faith effort to improve something which previously hindered the experience.
• officemonkey 14y ago
  This is seriously better than the old "gettyimages" watermark. And it's a very thoughtful way to get traffic back to their website. It (almost implicitly) expects people to use and share the watermarked image. I predict a greater use of watermarked images and greater traffic back to Getty Images.
  • rorrr 14y ago
    They could've made shorter URLs if they used numbers and letters (base 36).
    • mayanksinghal 14y ago
      Not sure if there are any comparative studies about it, but aren't random numbers a lot more readable than random alphabets (with numbers)? I have read people raise this issue with IPv6. Choosing to use just numbers seems like a good idea to me.
      • officemonkey 14y ago
        Phone numbers in the U.S. used to have a exchange name followed by numbers (the most famous example is "Pennsylvania 6-5000"). Folks would dial "P-E" (which is why there were letters on the old dial phones) and then the digits. I can assume that they fell out of favor because human memory favored the "3 digit-4 digit" chunking of the phone number rather than the "two letter-5 digit" chunking.
    • matt312 14y ago
      The short URL link isn't just random, it correlates to the image's "Creative Image Number".
      • officemonkey 14y ago
        Ah, so powerusers can just write down the number and know it's the Getty "Creative Image Number" and look it up at their liesure. Very clever.
• Maro 14y ago
  Those pictures look really nice, so I clicked through to see how much it would cost to use them on a website. It asked me all kind of bullshit questions like which industry I want to use them in, whether it's a site or an ad, TBH I don't think there's even a good way to answer their question. At the end it gave me a quote of $160 to use the image for a 1 month period. What a joke.
  • pvarangot 14y ago
    Are you at least moderately aware of the average costs and profit margins for that kind of photography? u$d 160 a month is sort of on the cheap side for the kind of images in that landing page, specially if you are thinking about the katana one. And of the stock photo services, Getty is by far the one that treats the photographers with most respect and compensates them very competitively.
    • GoodIntentions 14y ago
      Getty isn't after anyone that thinks 160 is expensive. They're after companies/individuals that understand 160 is much cheaper than paying 1+ professional for n hours to "maybe" get a usable shot. Having said that, the profusion of really really good modestly priced pro-am cameras has spawned an ugly race-to-the-bottom on stock photography. You can get ( often quite good ) stock photos for next to nothing from the low cost stock photography sites. To put it in HN parlance, Getty's model has been thoroughly 'disrupted'.
      • tomjen3 14y ago
        I take issue with your 'ugly-rate-to-the-bottom' unless you can explain to me how that is any different from anything else capitalism has made cheap enough for the masses to buy?
        • GoodIntentions 14y ago
          I called it an "ugly-race-to-the-bottom" because the micro stock niche debases the art and makes the photographer's work into a commodity judge mainly on its' cost. I don't know about you, but I won't take an afternoon setting up a shoot, utilize thousands of dollars worth of gear, spend more time selecting/post processing and then submit it to a service that will sell the rights for 1 dollar and pay me pennies. The micro stock model has worked because pricing was high. It's swung the other way. Fair value is not received in many cases.
• taejo 14y ago
  Seems like it would be easy to make a GIMP script to remove. I think the watermark needs more entropy/randomness to make it more difficult to separate the image from the watermark.
• m_for_monkey 14y ago
  A QR code would have been a better choice to embed than the URL. Who wants (or able to) type correctly 10 digits?
  • mdda 14y ago
    Yes - that has been the problem that's prevented the adoption of sequences of 10 numbers in the telephone system </sarcasm>
    • m_for_monkey 14y ago
      Telephone numbers are always use grouping (432-23-43), which makes copying easier. People still have problems with software license codes, although those are grouped too.
      • ktizo 14y ago
        However you can just imagine any grouping you like though, by using the power of thinking about stuff. It's a new process they just invented that, get this, lets you think about stuff. It isn't just restricted to thinking about stuff like groups of numbers however, but also works on things like duck identification and fluid dynamics, so it is very flexible.
        • pbhjpbhj 14y ago
          They should teach that stuff in school. Thinking, that could be really transformative.
          • ktizo 14y ago
            Been thinking along these lines, I've been wondering how to write a very short course for people who hate school on how to research and learn stuff.
  • unfletch 14y ago
    A QR code? What did you have in mind for interaction? As far as I know you'd need at least two devices (the one whose screen is displaying the image with the QR code, and the one you're using to snap a photo of it). And then you'd probably want send the decoded URL back to the original device to load in the original browser. Edit: Maybe you were thinking about the analog world, but watermarked images tend to show up in the digital space (in mockups especially).
• deleted 14y ago
  [deleted]
• tferris 14y ago
  Please help me understand: What is so special about a visible watermark which is gone anyway when I buy the image? Was it before that bad? Clueless.
• pg 14y ago
  Are there also invisible watermarks on the images?
  • bmelton 14y ago
    I'm not sure if you're asking whether or not there's information encoded in the image's metadata, or whether they're using some sort of additional watermark that appears when the image is downloaded or copied, ala this article[1]. If you're asking about metadata, I can say that on the Getty images I've used in the past (not for years though, so it's old data,) they were pretty diligent about ensuring Authorship information in the metadata. I can't remember whether or not there were any specific Getty attributions in there, like a link back to a page it could be purchased from, but in other comments here I see that they have a 'creative ID', which I didn't know about, so it's possible I just glossed over it. If you're asking about the second, I believe the answer is no, but I say so without having tried it, even cursorily. http://blog.makezine.com/2009/02/16/invisible-watermark/ http://blog.makezine.com/2009/02/16/invisible-watermark/
    • jmilloy 14y ago
      I assumed he was asking about a third option - imperceptible digital watermarking.
      • bmelton 14y ago
        Is that not the same as the second? The second method can be generally be detected programatically, but is invisible to the human eye. I was going to question the usefulness of an invisible watermark, as you could otherwise just compare a hash of the image, but I suppose an invisible watermark would likely persist through re-editing / resizing?
  • ig1 14y ago
    Getty used to use Digimarc's steganographic watermarking technology, but I don't know if they still do.
    • 14y ago
• JimmyL 14y ago
  I think this is great - it's either a win or no-worse-than-it-used-to-be, depending on the kind of Getty client you are. If you're a designer at an agency (which would use watermarked photos in their comps, and then purchase proper rights once the client has approved) this is no worse than it used to be. You still have a watermarked image, it's just slicker looking. Having the URL in there is handy, but you would have recorded that anyways as part of your workflow. It's worth noting that the license behind these images still hasn't changed - you're only allowed to use them for 30 days, and not in a finished commercial product. The other kind of client is the small-time blogger who would never pay for the image rights anyways, and would just use a watermarked comp shot in a post. According to the click-through license agreed to when downloading these images, this client type shouldn't exist - it's explicitly against what's permitted in the license - and yet it does, widely. For these clients, putting the URL in the image is a win for Getty; people who used these images will keep using them, but now those clients' viewers will be able to easily track the image back to its source, making it easy to actually purchase the image legally. This turns someone using a Getty image without permission from a problem (violating a license) to effectively free advertising. The obvious next step - although I bet this would be difficult based on all the pre-existing contracts with the photographers - would be to accept that the second type of client exists, change the license on the comp shots, and try to bring them into the Getty fold. Change the license to say that you're allowed to use the images anywhere online you'd like for free, as long as the photo and watermark stays intact and your number of average monthly unique users is less than, say, 10,000. Doing this would take a sizable user base and turn them from license-violators into free advertising. Financially, this wouldn't affect 90% of the type-2 clients (they'd stay under the viewership cap), and would only impact the bottom line of mid-sized publications, who really should be paying for the rights anyways.
  • rdl 14y ago
    For type 2, what about allowing them to be embedded and linked from the gty.im server (which could enforce the 10k hits limit, do analytics/tracking, etc.), for free?
    • JimmyL 14y ago
• thedeuce 14y ago
  Please make the box smaller, and maybe put it in the corner, and always make sure to use a large resolution image. That way it's not intrusive so I can use these images.
• waffle_ss 14y ago
  All these comments about a silly watermark and not one mention of Getty Images's contemptible RIAA-like business tactics of shaking down people who use their photos illegally? The owner of my daughter's daycare had posted one of their images on a simple little website he built for us parents, and they sent him a letter demanding a few hundred dollars or were going to take him to court for thousands (he paid up). Apparently they must have some type of crawler that searches the Web for their images.
  • JimmyL 14y ago
    It obviously depends on the numbers involved, but from your brief description nothing sounds wrong. It's pretty hard to "accidentally" stumble onto a Getty image used without a copyright statement which could lead you to think it's free to use, and a few hundred bucks is about what Getty charges as the rack-rate for a small business using one of their images (as you can see from their website). Maybe there are details I'm missing, but you don't mention any RIAA-like practices or gross inflation of the cost/damages.
    • waffle_ss 14y ago
      You might be right - I've never been in the situation - but he claimed to have taken it from some other site without any obvious copyright notice. Obviously not a smart move, and he did pay a price for it. The whole topic got brought up because I was planning on interviewing in one of their Rails shops and by doing research on the company I had stumbled across stories of people that had this exact thing happen to him, so I was shocked when he explained that it had happened to him as well. I don't think the "fee" is unreasonable if a few hundred dollars is the going rate for licensing the image (although I personally would never pay that much), I just find the automated process of hunting these people down and asking for money right away (no option to just take it down immediately) a little distasteful, and in a similar vein to the RIAA's tactics.
      • count 14y ago
        Why should you get the option to 'take it down immediately'? You've already caused the harm / received the benefit / etc., and you should pay for it.
• bostonvaulter2 14y ago
  Anyone have examples of their old watermarks?
• deleted 14y ago
  [deleted]
• joeshaw 14y ago
  These watermarks are a lot less annoying, but if I remember correctly the old watermarks were centered on the image, right? These new right-justified ones seem like they could be fairly easily abused. It took my about 30 seconds to find one like this: http://www.gettyimages.com/detail/news-photo/singer-and-songwriter-lisa-marie-presley-is-photographed-news-photo/144741552 http://www.gettyimages.com/detail/news-photo/singer-and-song... Pretty easy to crop out the right shot and have a perfectly fine, watermark-less photo. On the other hand, like most DRMish solutions, I guess if you're dedicated enough to not paying for works like these, you will.
• idspispopd 14y ago
  I have never really understood why stock photo stores insist on aggressive watermarks. They don't help their business, rather the opposite. The number of people who can get by with a low resolution preview image are going to be private users who are never going to buy the image anyway. (Especially with sites like sxc.hu where you can just get high resolution photography for no cost.) As someone who works with stock photos constantly, I can tell you that clients hate seeing watermarks, they're usually right in the way of the useful part of the image and are often distracting. As a result the art department photoshop them out which is painstaking and a waste of time for a low resolution image that is only going to be used once. I'm pleased that this new watermark is very easy to undo/disguise. Getty seem to understand that stock-pirates are fine with using low-resolution, highly compressed preview images without a license, while their actual customers need images with watermarks that are unobtrusive and easier to sell to the paying-client. The truth is that the image need only a very minor watermark, so the creative can track down the original. Creative agencies aren't stupid and are well versed in the laws that relate to stock images. They don't use random photos they find on the internet, and larger or risk-absolving clients will often require a copy of the license and waiver for the stock imagery.
  • deleted 14y ago
    [deleted]
• johncoltrane 14y ago
  Designers use these watermarked images when goofing around at the beginning of the creative process because they can't buy the dozens of image they need before actually knowing which one will be accepted by the client. Some images can be cheap, of course : royalty-free photos often are, compared to those with "exclusive rights", for example, but it would still take too much time and money. I know: I've spent countless hours looking for businessmen/women in Getty's and other databases. When you come up with 30 or 40 possible images and it's time to try them all in your comp it will be really hard to like this stupid square. Such a temporary picture MUST be neutral because you need it to fit your composition/layout. This rectangle is the opposite of neutral: it's huge and very visible. This big square is going to clash more often than not with other shapes around the image which won't be aligned with it provoking all kinds of troubles for the designers who use them. Clients will think that the square is part of the designer's intent and, when it will be explained to them that no, this big ass square isn't part of the design they will rightfully say "Well, get rid of it!". But it won't be possible without paying large buckets of money to Getty. Or using another service.
• DigitalSea 14y ago
  I think the new watermark is fantastic, it is definitely way better than their old watermark (a million times over). If you ever saw what the old watermark looked like, it ruined the images so much. Check out this image with the old watermark here: http://24.media.tumblr.com/tumblr_m3bvopcnLC1qbi7o0o1_400.jpg http://24.media.tumblr.com/tumblr_m3bvopcnLC1qbi7o0o1_400.jp... The watermark obscures vital detail in the image, kind of destroys the feeling of the original photo. So those of you who can only seem to muster up negative comments, go back to 4chan. The new watermark is innovative in an industry that feels like its been the same forever.