Steganography

[Aubrey]

Is anybody using steganography to protect photos?
There is a product made by Digimarc, but this is relatively expensive.

Are any people using the free software and if so which? I explored openstego http://www.openstego.com/ but it changed the jpgs dramatically!
Still investigating.

Perhaps Mario might consider adding this to 5.8 ? (i.e., the next upgrade when we give him some more money!)

Aubrey.

[Mario]

Personally, I think you are much better of with adding a 'real' watermark to your images (text overlay, logo, QR-Code etc.) e.g. in the IMatch Batch Processor. This does not hinder evaluation or using your images for designs (comps), but it will not allow to use your photos for print or web sites.

'Hidden' watermarks are not that hidden and often easily removed by converting and re-saving the image. It's not a real copyright or rights protection schema.

I also think I recall some on-line services which provide the service (you upload your files and download them again with a watermark applied). The expensive part is to keep track of your files or find stolen files by scanning the internet...

[sinus]

Personally, I think you are much better of with adding a 'real' watermark to your images (text overlay, logo, QR-Code etc.) e.g. in the IMatch Batch Processor. This does not hinder evaluation or using your images for designs (comps), but it will not allow to use your photos for print or web sites.

Yes, I personally think this too. 

[lnh]

Several years ago I played around with a windows app called "SignMyImage" which modifies JPEGs with an invisible watermark. If memory serves me, I could upload an image to Facebook (which emasculates image quality) and download it and the invisible watermark survived most of the time. Might have even sometimes survived a second generation scaling/re-save. The invisible payload is a simple code of several characters and it can't come remotely close to embedding a full copyright notice. Of course services like Facebook strip off/mine metadata so this method also offers little protection. For as ugly and distracting as it is, the visual watermark is about the only good method (assuming you can't easily crop it out of the shot). Personally I'd rather not post photos than go to the extent of Getty Images style watermarking although you can understand why they have to do it that way.