Getting frustrated with myself

[faeriegodess612]

Ever since I've gotten my D3100, now if I take something that I think is a good photo, I'm terrified to upload to anywhere. Flickr, my blog, even my Facebook have yet to see the pictures that I've taken with it.

I know there are precautions you can take, like watermarking, making sure right click is disabled, ( thanks to buddha for that one ) and uploading low res.

My problem with all of those, well only two. I dont know how to upload something in low res, and even though I can watermark, I want to make it so that its effective, but doesnt detract too much from the photo. In Picasa you can dull down the transparency of the text, but with white text, it makes it go gray. I'd like something like a logo, but have no idea how to go about that one either. And wouldnt know how to put it on photos, even if I had one.

I dont know,... This all sounds a lil nuts even to me. I want to showcase what I can do, for potential anything. But I want to protect my photos as much as possible, so that someone cant steal them, Photoshop out my watermark, and call it theirs. I know thats theres no sure fire way to put them out there without there being a way around all of that. Things like screenshots make that possible. But at least if it were low res it wouldnt be that great if someone did steal it. I just dont know how to do that without ruining the original file.

Can anyone help me? ( That sounds pathetic, but I've tried everything I can think of. )

[BuddhaPi]

If your running photoshop, use the save for web function, it will take the resolution down and pretty much make it useless as far as printing goes..doing this keeps the origanal file intact , as it makes a new web ready file.

[nickbedford]

You really can't do much beyond ruining your photo with a full image watermark. I got over it and just use a small © NICKBEDFORD.com in the corner as well as never uploading a high resolution image. 1000 pixels is more than enough but I like it at that size. It's more to do with showing that it's copyrighted than trying to prevent anything cause otherwise I'd have a huge © NICK BEDFORD ruining the actual viewing experience of my shots. Hell, many professional photographers around my area don't even watermark at all.

It's clearly there. It advertises my website and clearly states that it's copyrighted. Nothing more I can do.

[rosserx]

Hi, I think for the peace of mind you're seeking you should invest in getting Lightroom. You will be able to embed all your copyright information in the metadata, create custom text or image based watermarks and export low res images optimized for the web.

This is my watermark. I created the cup of coffee with my initials in Illustrator, saved it as a PNG and imported it into Lightroom as one of my watermark presets.

[nickbedford]

Originally Posted by rosserx

Hi, I think for the peace of mind you're seeking you should invest in getting Lightroom. You will be able to embed all your copyright information in the metadata, create custom text or image based watermarks and export low res images optimized for the web.

This is my watermark. I created the cup of coffee with my initials in Illustrator, saved it as a PNG and imported it into Lightroom as one of my watermark presets.

I wonder if that's effective? Not in stopping anyone but telling people about the copyright or you as the photographer.

To me, it's just some random coffee mug icon which I wouldn't really notice. I can't find who made the photo nor does it tell me that it's "copyrighted" in some way. Just my 2c on your watermark.

Mine is only one style, but you see that it's both copyrighted and you can also find where I am on the net.

[faeriegodess612]

Thanks guys. I've been thinking about a form of Photoshop. Simply because of what it can do that Gimp cant. As far as the editing part, thats pretty much the same. And because everything is written for Photoshop.

I do always watermark my photos, with the exception of snapshots, with my thing. Everything gets Creative Imagery by Amber © on it somewhere.

Still open to any other suggestions.

Update: Downloading the trial version of Lightroom 3 as I type. CS5 looked awesome, but seems a bit much, if you dont need something for web design.

[nickbedford]

Trust me (us), Lightroom will make you import, catalogue, edit and export photos about 1000x faster. Exaggerating but you get the idea.

[ravncat]

I also recommend embedding your copyright data in the metadata of the file - which is not visible, most people won't change it, and don't know it's there...

[faeriegodess612]

Originally Posted by nickbedford

Trust me (us), Lightroom will make you import, catalogue, edit and export photos about 1000x faster. Exaggerating but you get the idea.

Played with it a bit last night. ( That sounds wrong, but I mean Lightroom ) Its a bit different than what I'm used to. Might possibly download the trial for Elements after the 30 days is up if it'll allow me, to see which one I might like better.