AI and DIY Watermarks

The copyright issues with AI simply aren’t going away, so I’ve started applying a custom watermark to all of my graphics. And I think that everyone who works with graphics should do the same.

So long as your graphics package allows you to:

make an image semi transparent, andsave it as a .png file

…you can make your own watermark.

For those who don’t know what a .png file is, it’s an image format, similar to a .jpeg, but it’s higher quality, AND it retains any transparency in the image so you can ‘place’ the file over another image.

This is a .png file I made of my watermark:

And this is a quick mock-up showing how the watermark behaves over various colours:

As you can see, my watermark works best with lighter colours, but that’s partly due to the large areas of ‘light’ I left in the image. More solid images would show up better.

And finally this is the watermark on my latest graphic – Little Miss Asleep:

Can’t see it? How about this:

I’ve tried to make my watermark ‘unobtrusive’ so that it doesn’t completely ruin the image, but the trade-off with that is that it may not be obtrusive enough to deter others from copying the image. -shrug- I live in hope, but the only way to truly protect an image is to place a grid of watermarks over it, the way iStock does. But this would look horrible:

If governments don’t regulate AI, then I imagine that ‘the market’ will eventually have to do something for its own protection, but that could take years. In the meantime, content creators have to take what precautions we can, and watermarks are one weapon in our arsenal.

Happy watermarking,
Meeks