Using Watermarked Images Is it allowed?

[levimage 0]

I agree with pyost, creative commons is something to look into, if a photo you like is unique and beyond your creative abilities and you don't have funds to purchase commercial work. Then again if you have a decent camera and some photo editing experience you can always try to reproduce the shot yourself. Or have a photographer/photography student take a shot and them or some else do the post work - photoshop/photoediting for you. The new work would then be a collaboration of artists - including you, if added your creative input. So you would have rights to the work.Other things pyost mentions about not posting the original is true. Rename it something else. Cropping the photo to general aspect ratios, stripping the EXIF Camera information and adding your own VIA your photo editings software. Some things I do when presenting before and after shots of my photography to clients are... post at a variety of smaller resolutions, or add compression so people wont have the full quality image, and an annoying water mark, or my company logo, adding artifacts into the image or inducing noise.Other efforts to use javascript to not right-click a Save an image can all be circumvented by going in the cache or temp files. Maybe if you can embed you images in a flash program - like a portfoliio and or have a SSL certificate to the you photo gallery is encrypted. Or run some form of web application that make use of various plugins which require other plugins to query, retrieve, and display you images. That might also work. Then again that might be too much, but it is possible.Well those are my tips for safeguarding your media.

[yordan 10]

Well those are my tips for safeguarding your media.

Thanks for your tips. However, remember the topic start post : The question was not "how can I safeguard my media", the question was "Is it allowed to steal somebody else's picture?" And the answer is clearly : "of course no!" Not here, and not at all !

[H.O.D 0]

Thanks for your tips. However, remember the topic start post : The question was not "how can I safeguard my media", the question was "Is it allowed to steal somebody else's picture?" wink.gif

And the answer is clearly : "of course no!" Not here, and not at all !

another good ending to this question would be - there are thousands of people stealing pictures to use on their blogs and websites so you might think you can also get away with it. most probably you may get away with it because there are simply too many sites to trace, but it is still illegal and nothing will change that. so never use the images without proper permission.

[vhortex 1]

The question can be easily solved by asking the owner of the image. I used a lot of watermarked pictures from the past but on each use I asked the owner. Most photo was selling at $15-$100 each but telling them that the image will be used for a site that targets users of photography and photo editing. I was granted free access on most requested images.The deal was, I will provide a random area that showcase 'featured' images chosen by the image provider on thumbnails linked to a low resolution copy with a 'preview higher resolution' and 'buy' button going to the original creators site. It is a free advertisement and a link at the footer saying 'Professional Images from site.com"There are always a drawback to this approach, you cannot resell the image, modify the image without writing them on your plan. You cannot find another image provider for your photos (unless you pay for them before you made a deal). No advertisement on your site that will lead to a competition image provider. They will also ask you to put either a banner, a text ad or a review article for there service.Overall it is faster to buy them than to agree on all conditions that they will set. *******************If you use them with no permission, they can sue you and even if there are no laws covering your crime on your country, some companies will file a case on international court and can cause your hosting service terminated. Worst case scenario, you can also loose your domain.

[mahesh2k 0]

Attribution is what creative commons came up with to give value back to the author. Some of the authors allow attribution while some want to deal with business for this. So you need to see what is the author's inclination towards products i.e. images or other content.If it's in creative commons then you can surely see what license it has and take your action respectively. Violating these rules will surely put into trouble as well. Will you see any fun if someone takes your image and distributes freely on the internet ? Ofcourse not, so give credit where it is due. Don't waste time with watermarked images.