4 ms·

Let let me explain why one might watermark their photos. I sell aftermarket car parts for JDM vehicles. Most of these products don't have images from the manufa

Let let me explain why one might watermark their photos. I sell aftermarket car parts for JDM vehicles. Most of these products don't have images from the manufacturer. Why? Well there lots of reasons but it boils down to different configurations. It would be too time consuming to take an image of every product in every configuration for every model they sell. So they may have a generic picture of an exhaust system, that may or may not be the product you're paying for. I know that consumers like to see what they buy. I want to have pictures of every image I sell. To do that, I need to order 1 of everything I plan to sell so I can take photos of each item. As you can see it gets pretty costly. I'm spending time, money and effort, to give the best possible shopping experience. All while letting the customer know I have a product in my hands that my competitors don't. My competitors on the other hand. They just signed up for a new drop shipping account with the same distributor but guess what? They have no images of the items they sell and have no capital to order the item in. So where do they get those images? You guessed it, from everyone else. When I first started I remember giving discounts to customers who would allow me to open their package and take showcase photos before sending them. I would be upset if someone used my photos without my permission. I don't have time or money to police the internet. So I protect my investment through the use of the water mark. If not, it'd be like Ebay where you see 40 different sellers using the same exact product image, atrocious.

RokStdy 13y ago
Thanks for the interesting perspective. This doesn't help you since you already have a catalog of photos, but I wonder if you might get around this rule if you took pictures of <part> on a backdrop with your logo repeated. That way, sure, I could try to crop it to get rid of your logo, but if it's an irregular shape I'd have to Photoshop your stuff out. Or maybe a sticker with your logo on an unimportant part of the product.
- Pxtl 13y ago
  That does restrain them a bit though - with a watermark, they can batch-change the nature or obtrusiveness of the watermark, they can resell the unmarked images, they can update their logo freely. None of that can be done with the real-world-logo appearing on the product.
  - sentenza 13y ago
    It might be possible to use a greenscreen, though. You do your photoshoot with a greenscreen in the background/part of the background, then digitally replace the grenscreen with your logo. Since your logo and the product are mixed at the edge pixels, it will look crappy if cropped, whereas you yourself have the greenscreen originals and can change the background whenever and however you like.
    - Pxtl 13y ago
      If you wanted to be really super-fancy you could apply some image recognition decals to the greenscreen that would allow a program to determine the orientation of the platform below or background behind the object. Then you can actually do a more sophisticated projection of your logo onto the surface and keep the shadows provided by your subject. But at this point it's gotten a little sophisticated for a small seller.
- millzlane 13y ago
  That's a good idea. Instead of watermarking the images, silkscreen our logo on the backdrop. I wonder if that qualifies as "promotional text".
- mark-r 13y ago
  Reading the original post, this would run afoul of the rules too.
Pxtl 13y ago
Funny how we destroy file-formats and screw up the very HTML standard itself and muck up YouTube all to protect video and audio content, but nobody gives a crap about images and we're left with a Wild West. Look how many above-board publicly-run sites are based on the trading of copyrighted image content. Ask a webcomic author what they think of Funnyjunk and the like. I don't know what the right solution is, but it seems absurd that one form of copyrighted content lives completely without protection because that's the content that's created by small businesses instead of global megacoporations. That said, Google probably could at least protect your image content from being filched by other users within the Google platform if you could "register" your image with them as the original - they have image-matching algorithms to enforce that.
- ivanca 13y ago
  That's already the case; they see who posted the image first and it scores "SEO points" for that.
  - TrevorJ 13y ago
    I don't care about Google fun bucks (Tm) or whatever reward they feel is fair for forcing me to not protect my images. I should be able to protect the images I created.
prodigal_erik 13y ago
Could you send the FTC after competing "merchants" who are advertising products they not only don't have in stock but have literally never seen? It sounds like a scam, and I wouldn't knowingly give money to an outfit like that.
- msbarnett 13y ago
  > Could you send the FTC after competing "merchants" who are advertising products they not only don't have in stock but have literally never seen? It sounds like a scam, and I wouldn't knowingly give money to an outfit like that. I hate to break it to you, but a HUGE amount of e-commerce sites are nothing more than front-ends to drop-shipping accounts with suppliers. This is the dominant pattern in the industry. Actually holding your own inventory is a rarity that would put you at a major competitive disadvantage. Unless you're dealing with a very large, well-capitalized site, or a company that makes their own product, you're almost certainly dealing with this kind of store.
jborden13 13y ago
The inverse holds true here as well. Manufacturers are constantly battling with unauthorized & shady retailers to maintain the integrity of the images - as well as with the 2 major platforms that own eCommerce and online product advertising. This is seriously some anti-competitive action, on the whole. See the Amazon model where they monitor the products and retailers on the platform, identify the best sellers and then set their systems to always be the cheapest and always win on integrated services. Eventually no one can compete and only AMZN shareholders will win in the long run.
wahsd 13y ago
Just curious are you watermarking to specifically deter unauthorized use of the image? I ask because I could see how you could use steganography to hide copyright information or simply add the watermark in such a manner that you would only be able to detect/reveal it by a specific method of color alterations. That way you would still have a case if you needed to take legal action. edit: I just realized that will probably never be answered so does anyone else feel like giving some perspective?

RokStdy 13y ago

Thanks for the interesting perspective. This doesn't help you since you already have a catalog of photos, but I wonder if you might get around this rule if you took pictures of <part> on a backdrop with your logo repeated. That way, sure, I could try to crop it to get rid of your logo, but if it's an irregular shape I'd have to Photoshop your stuff out. Or maybe a sticker with your logo on an unimportant part of the product.

Pxtl 13y ago
That does restrain them a bit though - with a watermark, they can batch-change the nature or obtrusiveness of the watermark, they can resell the unmarked images, they can update their logo freely. None of that can be done with the real-world-logo appearing on the product.
- sentenza 13y ago
  It might be possible to use a greenscreen, though. You do your photoshoot with a greenscreen in the background/part of the background, then digitally replace the grenscreen with your logo. Since your logo and the product are mixed at the edge pixels, it will look crappy if cropped, whereas you yourself have the greenscreen originals and can change the background whenever and however you like.
  - Pxtl 13y ago
    If you wanted to be really super-fancy you could apply some image recognition decals to the greenscreen that would allow a program to determine the orientation of the platform below or background behind the object. Then you can actually do a more sophisticated projection of your logo onto the surface and keep the shadows provided by your subject. But at this point it's gotten a little sophisticated for a small seller.
millzlane 13y ago
That's a good idea. Instead of watermarking the images, silkscreen our logo on the backdrop. I wonder if that qualifies as "promotional text".
mark-r 13y ago
Reading the original post, this would run afoul of the rules too.

Pxtl 13y ago

Funny how we destroy file-formats and screw up the very HTML standard itself and muck up YouTube all to protect video and audio content, but nobody gives a crap about images and we're left with a Wild West. Look how many above-board publicly-run sites are based on the trading of copyrighted image content. Ask a webcomic author what they think of Funnyjunk and the like. I don't know what the right solution is, but it seems absurd that one form of copyrighted content lives completely without protection because that's the content that's created by small businesses instead of global megacoporations. That said, Google probably could at least protect your image content from being filched by other users within the Google platform if you could "register" your image with them as the original - they have image-matching algorithms to enforce that.

ivanca 13y ago
That's already the case; they see who posted the image first and it scores "SEO points" for that.
- TrevorJ 13y ago
  I don't care about Google fun bucks (Tm) or whatever reward they feel is fair for forcing me to not protect my images. I should be able to protect the images I created.

prodigal_erik 13y ago

Could you send the FTC after competing "merchants" who are advertising products they not only don't have in stock but have literally never seen? It sounds like a scam, and I wouldn't knowingly give money to an outfit like that.

msbarnett 13y ago
> Could you send the FTC after competing "merchants" who are advertising products they not only don't have in stock but have literally never seen? It sounds like a scam, and I wouldn't knowingly give money to an outfit like that. I hate to break it to you, but a HUGE amount of e-commerce sites are nothing more than front-ends to drop-shipping accounts with suppliers. This is the dominant pattern in the industry. Actually holding your own inventory is a rarity that would put you at a major competitive disadvantage. Unless you're dealing with a very large, well-capitalized site, or a company that makes their own product, you're almost certainly dealing with this kind of store.

jborden13 13y ago

The inverse holds true here as well. Manufacturers are constantly battling with unauthorized & shady retailers to maintain the integrity of the images - as well as with the 2 major platforms that own eCommerce and online product advertising. This is seriously some anti-competitive action, on the whole. See the Amazon model where they monitor the products and retailers on the platform, identify the best sellers and then set their systems to always be the cheapest and always win on integrated services. Eventually no one can compete and only AMZN shareholders will win in the long run.

wahsd 13y ago

Just curious are you watermarking to specifically deter unauthorized use of the image? I ask because I could see how you could use steganography to hide copyright information or simply add the watermark in such a manner that you would only be able to detect/reveal it by a specific method of color alterations. That way you would still have a case if you needed to take legal action. edit: I just realized that will probably never be answered so does anyone else feel like giving some perspective?