In the age of the digital world, everyone thinks they can just grab any image they want off of Google image search and use it for any purpose they want. While actually protecting your copyright as an artist is a different topic entirely, we talk about how to do your best to ensure attribution is given to you when you’re not there to babysit your artwork.
What is a watermark?
A watermark is a faint image placed within a piece of paper that helps to promote the authenticity of that document. You can see watermarks in the physical world by holding up a US currency bill to the light: on a twenty, you’ll see Ben Franklin’s face ghosted faintly in on the bill. For artists, watermarking means to place an item that gives you credit as the artist on that work. Watermarks can be just text, text and logos, just logos, or something else. They’re usually applied faintly and don’t detract from the work too much.
Use the Tools
The big thing to understand is that you should make use of the tools that are available to you. While some people simply rely on artistic style to be recognized, not all of us can be Claude Monet or Van Gogh, and a lot of us when our art is shared without attribution end up drowning in a sea of unnamed artists. The best thing you can do is try to be as proactive as possible. We’ll go over some of the tools including watermarking and meta data in the next few paragraphs.
Be Proactive
It sounds silly, but being proactive is the best thing you can do. You never know what kind of art will go viral. I’ve had artwork go viral when it was in WIP stages, far surpassing the share of the final product. In these mistakes I pass off to you — whenever posting anything on social media or elsewhere, make sure that you a. Have a watermark on it that clearly states your name at the least and b. Make sure you attach your profile URLs in any descriptions on say, Facebook or Tumblr. Even if it’s a quick scribble, pretend like every single post you make will go viral, because the one that you miss will be the one that does!
Watermarking 101
Let’s talk about watermarks. Unfortunately, there’s not really a good way to watermark. You don’t want your watermark to be so in-your-face and intrusive that it takes away from the artwork, but you also don’t want your watermark to be able to be easily cropped out. So what can you do?
Place your watermark in an essential area
I don’t mean place it in the middle of the work, but place it in a spot high enough that it might actually cut off some important part of the picture if someone tries to crop it out. You can make it nearly invisible, like this individual did:
Attach all the goods
A logo is great, but if no one knows who that logo is, then it’s kind of useless. Attach your name to your logo, or your website.
Sign your work too
Add a signature somewhere unassuming in your piece so if your watermark does end up out of the picture, something is there that can identify you.
Consider an all-over watermark
Since LLMs are getting increasingly better at simply editing out watermarks, placing an invisible watermark all over your artwork can help you discourage LLMs and people from editing or cropping out your watermarks. I have been placing all-over watermarks in individual color channels, making them difficult or impossible to discern with the naked eye, which means someone is not likely to think to edit it out. Still, it proves my status as the original artist.
Meta Data
Meta data isn’t really a concern for most people, but if you really want to leave your signature on your work, you can always edit the EXIF meta data on your images. EXIF information can be autofilled to include things like how you shot a photo (if you shot it on a camera), but can also include author data such as your name. This information can be added, removed, or even falsified fairly easily, so it’s not perfect, but it will follow your work almost anywhere it goes and is not removed, with exception to social media like Facebook, that strips EXIF data from all uploaded photos.
If the last place your work ends up before it hits the web is Photoshop, you can easily append this information. First you’ll want to make a metadata template in Bridge by clicking on “metadata” in the upper right hand corner, then on the hamburger menu on the left under “metadata”, followed by “create metadata template”. Fill in all the information you want to appear in your new template. Once you’ve clicked save you can use it in any Adobe application.
Let’s head back to Photoshop and attach it to a document. Go to File > File Info, and then on the bottom of the dialogue box, click on the dropdown and find your template. It will then ask you what you want to do. In my case, I just want to replace everything, so I’m going to hit the first radio button and click OK. This will fill everything for me. I should also input the title of the work, but most of the information is there for me.
In metadata, you can also include things like the copyright and sometimes even information that will prefill if it’s uploaded into say WordPress such as the description. This can help you save time when uploading to the web.
I hope that these small tips help you to keep your work safe and sound! How do you handle watermarking your works? Let me know in the comments below!