For me, the watermark is less about preventing others from stealing my images and more about allowing someone who may see those images to find me and possibly hire me for work.

Lightroom 2 is capable of visibly watermarking your photos in the lower-left corner with any text you have in your Copyright metadata field. It’s pretty easy to crop off the part of a photo (or clone it out, if someone really wanted to). Putting a large watermark that covers more of the image is certainly more effective against unauthorized use, but who wants to look at a picture with a huge watermark on the center of it!?!

If people really want to steal your images, they’ll probably be able to. I believe that is a risk I’m willing to take by sharing my work online. In the end, I feel like I come out ahead.

Thanks for commenting,
Scott Rouse

I really need to get on top of my watermarking. Some images I’ve marked but the majority I haven’t & I do realize I’m taking risk by not marking all of the ones I’ve shared publically. I do wonder though if watermarking works if someone is really intent on stealing your images? I feel that if I’m posting my work anywhere online I’m taking a bit of a risk & watermarks may deter some people but others may like the challenge of trying to remove them.

I agree that photographers (and everyone else posting things on the Internet) should be aware of the terms of service for sites that they use. Not at least skimming them is akin to signing a contract you haven’t even read.

That being said, I don’t want Terms of Service to scare photographers away from what is, in my opinion, the way business is done these days. For photographers with clients (wedding and event photographers, in particular), sharing their work in a way that lets it easily and readily be re-shared with others is imperative.

Put a visible watermark on part of your image; not to keep some 15 year old sister of the bride from downloading your tiny jpg off Facebook and setting it as the desktop background on her netbook. Watermark those images so that when they get shared (which you should want to happen) viewers of the images know where to find you and pay you money to take pictures of their wedding. (That’s how my wife and I found our wedding photographers!)

If you’re ready to really hit it with Social Media and step up your sales, I recommend Crush It!: Why NOW Is the Time to Cash In on Your Passion by Gary Vaynerchuk. David (the author of this post) gave the book to me, and I’m recommending it to you. It’s cheap, short, easy-to-read, inspirational, and helpful. You won’t regret it.

-Scott