watermark images

[daniel.mons at iinet.net.au]

 On Wed Apr 23 21:26 , Sebastian Spiess  sent:

>hi all,
>
>for a while now I thought about this, did one of you ever put a watermark on a picture? Say when you send your picture to a 
>competition or so to prove you are the owner etc...
>
>I am sure there are some linux tools to do that... but is it worth doing it? what about the picture quality...?

The "how" is ImageMagick:
http://www.imagemagick.org/Usage/annotating/#watermarking

The "why" is entirely up to you.  I have some rather large clients in the film, tv, photography and graphic design industries, and watermarking is a pretty standard need for them to protect their revenue streams.  Anything that covers your image will detract from it's quality, but it's up to you if you don't trust the individual/group that will have access to the images after you send them off. 

It's worth noting that "lack of trust" is not a negative thing either.  Trust needs to be earned, not given by default and reneged when it's all too late.  These are the same reasons I give non-privileged user accounts to staff and use SSH to connect to servers. :)

There are plenty of examples of people putting photographs on their personal websites and places like flikr only to have them appear in commercial works and advertising without their approval.

-Dan