Friday, September 23, 2011

Pinterest...Another Reason To Watermark Your Photos.

Hey everyone! Happy Friday to you!
Gonna rant today, but it's for your own good and could affect traffic to your blog and even get you more followers, so read on!

I'm not a photographer and my photos aren't on the professional level, but I now watermark my photos put up on my blog. As always, there are a few exceptions~ I don't watermark my boring tutorial photos.
I don't mind people using my photos and encourage everyone to share. Of course, if you use someone's photo for profit, that's another story.

Having said that, please watermark your photos! With the popularity of Pinterest, photos are being pinned every day and because some Pinterest users don't know how to pin properly or something happens with Pinterest as you are pinning, sometimes the original website is missing. 



I really love the  dining room below and would love to visit the website or blog and maybe even become a follower, but because I don't know where this photo is from, I can't.

(update:Thanks to Lisa, who commented below, I now know that this dining room was designed by  Hunter - Barnes interior design and the website it originated from is cococozy.com. Now I need to go to my Pinterest page and repin it!)


Here's what the photo looked like when I pinned it...
You can see that there's a blogspot.com listed on the top right above the photo, but when I  clicked on it I got a Google 404 error...whatever that means!


Here's a photo of my daughter's shabby chic bedroom with my diy Design Fanatic watermark on it:
 If for some reason, website link is missing, at least the person looking at the photo can google the blog name.
There are several free photo editing software downloads on the internet...I use Picasa. 
Would love to know if you use editing software that's free and what it is....please let us know!

Hope you have a great weekend!

Pam

25 comments:

  1. Hi Pam,
    I never thought my photos were so wonderful, but when someone used one of them as their screen saver it made me think about a watermark. I didn't mind that she used it, but there are some photos that I don't put out there for that reason. I also feel that if someone wants a photo, they could just crop out the watermark-of course it could be placed across the photo! Guess I should start using one on some photos.
    -Lynn

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  2. Wonderful bit of advise Pam. A few weeks ago, I saw a weird site that grabbed my pallet project and pasted it to their site. I went and said something right away and they removed it...I was shocked because it had my name all over it. I have to figure out how to add my name automatically so I do not have to add it to each picture.

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  3. I never watermark my images, but that's a good point.

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  4. Pam: Oh yes indeed...I find Pinterest very frustrating. I don't think half the people using it really know (care?) about giving credit to original sources. No, I just haven't bothered to get that watermark going, but now I will. Too bad, it's just one more cumbersome step to posting!
    Did you read Kathysue's post on Pinterest? Interesting. Personally, I don't use it for ideas for my blog for the very reason that the world can then see them before I am ready. I use Evernote to store photos by category.
    Anyway, thanks for this update! And have a great weekend: let's hope the weather clears up....

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  5. Pam I would love to do this but am not sure how. I use Picasa too is it easy to watermark them?

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  6. I like photoscape(free or donation is accepted) better than picasa, but I use both. Photoscape has many more options than picasa.

    I add a watermark to my photos when I compose my posts in Windows Live Writer.

    The dining room is gorgeous!

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  7. I totally agree! I use Picnik to watermark my photos.

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  8. Good idea. That dining room is beautiful! I can see your point.

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  9. Excellent idea! Thanks for the reminder (and no, I have never watermarked a photo, but will now). The closest I've ever done it was to put "Suz {heart} CitraSolv" on a bottom of a generic tut photo I had of a CS bottle to be "cute" and not so boring, but yes, watermarking should be done now too.

    Thanks for sharing this tip and post.

    A Follower of yours in NW Illinois,
    Suzanne
    (who LOVES CitraSolv, btw-- lol)

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  10. Yep! I've been thinking the same thing lately. When I forgot to watermark my cabinet feet tutorial and then started seeing it all over Pinterest often with no link back to our blog it was a little discouraging. I'm like you, I usually watermark the "best" photos or my reveal pictures but not the tutorial or before pictures. I try and put the watermark at the bottom but still high enough that it would be hard to crop it out.

    As a "pinner" I also try my best when I see a pin I want to repin to go all the way through to the original site and pin from there, that way I know I'm giving credit to the original creator of the photograph or project. It's a little extra work but it makes me feel better knowing I'm going to the source. I forget to do that sometimes but I try to when I remember. Great post Pam!

    Heather

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  11. Great advice Pam. I use picnik and it's free, but I've been think of upgrading so I have a few more options. But you can do a lot on picnik for free! Martina

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  12. Is there anyway to batch edit photos and watermark them? I have had photobucket for years and it is due to expirte in a few days. I have thousands of photos on the site, but editing each one individually to watermark them is very, very slow. Thanks in advance for any help or ideas. I am going to peek at some of the sites mentioned above.

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  13. Shannon,I haven't used photobucket that much, so I don't know about the batch watermarking.
    I just googled "can you batch edit & add watermark to your photos" and a few links came up, but I don't know how it would interface with photobucket, though.
    I just read that you can do it in Picasa, but before you upload it. Here's the link for Picasa" http://picasa.google.com/support/bin/answer.py?answer=106193

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  14. Good advice Pam ... many time I have the same problem and cant work it out...
    I used Adobe Photoshop for water marking...
    Thanks for the informative post
    http://craftaworld.blogspot.com/
    Love
    Farah

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  15. I'm one of those followers that can't figure out how to pin! Any pic without a watermark is safe with me!

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  16. Thanks for the link! I am going to check it out before I renew my pro membership. Batch watermarking would be very, very nice =)

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  17. Wow, what a timely post. I have been wondering how to watermark my pics. I got antsy when reading the comments that they had to be done one at a time. I am just starting to use picasa and I use Iphoto with my mac. I am probably too lazy to watermark one at a time but batch marking sounds good.
    I may be a problem on pinterest. When reading about pinterest I thought that the source was automaticly credited. Is that the case for the original pin from the original source only? Am I understanding, if I pin from another board the original source is not linked? If so, I will start going back to the original link to pin. Thanks for the heads up.
    Now, I am headed over to picasa to learn about watermarking.
    I learn so much from you sweethearts.
    Pam, Thanks again for a great post turned forum. Have a great weekend, Ginger

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  18. Pam,
    Great post! I was just telling a friend of mine on yesterday the same thing "watermark your pictures"!! I too have no problem with others re-posting my photos but I would like to at least get the credit. That picture you posted above is a room designed by Hunter-Barnes. You can find all the details from the project here http://www.cococozy.com/2010_08_01_archive.html

    Lisa

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  19. Thanks so much, Lisa! I tried to email you, but you have "no reply blogger" on. Thanks for sending the link!

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  20. Hi Pam!
    Thanks so much for letting me know that my email reply blogger was not turned on. I can't believe that ALL this time I had no idea...LOL.
    I'm glad I was able to help you locate the source of that photo, I too hate posting photos without giving credit.

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  21. thanks Pam, I have watermarked in the past but haven't done it in a while, never thought about since I started pinning, until just now. Good advice!

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  22. I just had this conversation with my husband that I have to watermark my photos...I just have no idea how to. I have a MAC and I would love to do it there. Do you know if I can do it that way or do I have to bring it over to Picnik or one of the free photo editing to do it? Thanks in advance for any tips you can give.

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  23. I've been thinking about watermarking for a while now but. I need to start doing this! Thanks for the tip :)

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  24. Pam: I've been working on this ever since your post...even in France. Had lunch with two bloggers and we all got to thinking and working. Well...I may have the best solution, found by my friend over in Provence. But let me try it first... download and play around...and then I'll get back to you. It even has (so it says) a way to batch watermark! Will get back on this in a day or two...

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