Removing watermark from photo
- Thread starter saracen
- Start date
Is this photo one that was taken of you by a company like 'Venture'. You should know that a lot of these companies make their money by retaining the rights to these images so that they are the only ones who can enlarge or frame them for you. If this is the case then this is a legitimate practice and you would have been required to sign a form giving them rights to these images.
In this case if you remove the watermark and use the images you are infringing on their copyright and technicaly breaking the law despite the fact that you are in the picture! Annoying I know but that's how it is.
If I have gone off on one and this is not the case then I would be happy to help you remove the watermark (providing there are no kids in the pictures)
In this case if you remove the watermark and use the images you are infringing on their copyright and technicaly breaking the law despite the fact that you are in the picture! Annoying I know but that's how it is.
If I have gone off on one and this is not the case then I would be happy to help you remove the watermark (providing there are no kids in the pictures)
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T
TFGtv
P.O.D. covers the key issues here... The photograph is subject to the provisions of The Copyright designs and Patents Act 1988, a copy of which you'll find online quite easily.
Unless you actually took the photograph or have the written permission of the copyright holder (probably the photographer) then what you propose doing may well be illegal. And the consequences, should you be proposing to use the picture commercially, could be very serious indeed.
An Edinburgh removals firm recently faced legal costs in excess of £25,000 for the unlicensed use of a stock image on their website. this was down to simple incomptetence on the part of their web designer and AFAIK in that case there was no attempt to actually circumvent any warnings or the like that the image was copyright. But actually removing a watermark as you propose could be seen by the court as evidence of flagrancy, and actually make matters much much worse in that the copyright holder could seek extra damages...
I'm also personally aware of a tradesman who used a rogue web designer to build his site who did the same thing. Cost him in excess of £15K! Don't be tempted to dismiss the dangers here!
...Probably cheaper to hire a photographer and have a nice picture done of yourselves!
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If someone pays you to shoot the images, surely you hand the copyright over to them so they can do what they want with their own images?
Unless you're referring to the sample images before they pay up fully.
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That's what I thought...been involved in a similar sort of case recently...
I'd thought someone was looking for a short cut...
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- Original Poster
- #10
Hi guys, thanks for your replies.
Can i add that we ( family ) paid a hefty price ( well into the £000's ) to have them taken ( photographer took 215 pic of us all together and seperates )
We are paying additional costs to have some of them printed and framed from the same photographer for my parents, in-laws etc.
However, there are 2 or 3 we are not wanting printed but my kids would like to use them for thier Fbook profiles, hence the reason of my initial question.
I have Corel, but it its easy enough to get photoshop if thats the software required to take off the watermark of the 3 pics.
Can i add that we ( family ) paid a hefty price ( well into the £000's ) to have them taken ( photographer took 215 pic of us all together and seperates )
We are paying additional costs to have some of them printed and framed from the same photographer for my parents, in-laws etc.
However, there are 2 or 3 we are not wanting printed but my kids would like to use them for thier Fbook profiles, hence the reason of my initial question.
I have Corel, but it its easy enough to get photoshop if thats the software required to take off the watermark of the 3 pics.
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Regretably it would still be highly illegal to use the images in the way you have just described. You should review the terms of your contract as it doesn't really matter if you paid £10 or £10million for the photos to be taken, if the photographer's t&c's say that he owns the images then he owns the images.
Check to see if you are allowed to use the images in the facebook context if the watermark remains intact, that may be your best bet. Or...you could infringe his copyright and risk it....
Check to see if you are allowed to use the images in the facebook context if the watermark remains intact, that may be your best bet. Or...you could infringe his copyright and risk it....
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TFGtv
Not necessarily. Copyright's a fairly complex thing, and even in a commercial context it's likely the content producer will retain some degree of control over the material and how it's used.... Extracting a segment of video from a DVD for instance and re-editing/re-encoding it into something else will probably produce a result that will reflect badly on the original producer... So it's something that every legitimate pro producer I know EXCLUDES from the licence the end user gets...
And I know many social photographers depend on print/reprint revenues for a large part of their margin. Depends on individual attitudes of course, but I could seem some photographers on discovering unpaid images on Facebook heading to the builders yard to buy a ton of bricks and an afternoon's crane hire!
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TFGtv
Have you looked on the back of the paperwork? Or at his T&Cs?
Doesn't really matter anyway because it's actually the Copyright Designs and Patents act 1988 (i.e. the law of the land) that says he owns the images! Because they're domestic portraits there's a limit to what he can do with them... But he still owns them!
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TFGtv
Aaaaaaah but i do have legit Corel suite which i purchased last year !
Quite so, I'm sure, but I think the figurative eyebrow was raised at your apparent preparedness to purchase PhotoShop, something that costs several hundred pounds in legitimate form, to cicumvent the photographer's watermarks...
Why not just pay the man? :|
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Dawg
Saracen,
why don't you explain to the Photog why you want them, and see if you can get a goodwill (almost?) freebie of say, 3 kids pics, 125px by 125px for web use?
If you have spent that much and you 'ask nice' I'm sure there must be a chance that he will be OK about it. Good customer service really, for no real loss.
Got to be worth a go?
(Or you could follow the surreal route suggested and "go online and buy the photos", presumably from iStockWTF.com).
why don't you explain to the Photog why you want them, and see if you can get a goodwill (almost?) freebie of say, 3 kids pics, 125px by 125px for web use?
If you have spent that much and you 'ask nice' I'm sure there must be a chance that he will be OK about it. Good customer service really, for no real loss.
Got to be worth a go?
(Or you could follow the surreal route suggested and "go online and buy the photos", presumably from iStockWTF.com).
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TFGtv
Quite apart from the fact he's trying to edit pictures of his own family that he had taken by a professional photographer.... but hasn't paid for prints of...
The sites you're talking about are a REALLY dumb way of acquiring photos for a web page! If you read the T&Cs very few of them have any proper controls over copyright. the sites themselves give no warranty in this respect. And the net result is you can wind up paying for 'licenses' that are of no legal worth whatsoever!!!
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TFGtv
People are aye up for a 'bargain'. And they often don't look beyond the price ticket sadly... There are good reasons why professional photographs cost what they cost. And much has to do with the way the rights to those photographs is managed...
These bucket sites are dangerous both for the mug punters who buy for them and those who are silly enough to supply them. Many are based overseas and thus 'untouchable' by the UK courts.
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hahahah don't make me laugh paying hundreds of pounds in the year of 2009 for a photographer!!! you must be joking!!! and then having the greedy photographer watermark them!!! buy yourself a flipping digital camera for £100, the difference in quality is not that big!!! photographing is a job that should have died when the digital cameras were introduced...
just pay some geek £5 to take out the watermarks and be smarter next time and take the pictures yourself
err excuse me! Your telling me the difference in quality between a professional photographer and someone using a digital camera is small. I think maybe you should speak to some of the photographers on here. They would have a few words to say about that!
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Think you will find the person who made this comment, is about 15 years old and still has a lot of growing to do - best to just ignore!
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Dawg
Wiki on Bert Hardy:
"Having written an article for amateur photographers suggesting you didn't need an expensive camera to take good pictures, Hardy staged a carefully posed photograph of two young women sitting on railings above a breezy Blackpool promenade using a Box Brownie."
Which is why, on the whole profs don't talk about kit, amateurs do. It's the eye not the tool.
(Given the picture I should probably rephrase that)
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- Original Poster
- #32
Dawg, thanks, i'll speak to the foti chappie
Also, perhaps you have just touched on a...well as it appears....a touchy subject ?
If i bought a reasonable digital camera, say a 9 or 10 mp off the shelf and chose the correct setting and of course got the lighting correct, i could get the same results. Some of the pro's also do some tweaking with the likes of photoshop - i believe. No probs, i can do that.
When we had out photos taken the guy told me its not really the amount of mega pixel that counts but its the lens. Now it was a big lens and in the price range of a couple of K. So can i ask the pro photographers if indeed the results are in the lens ? Remember im refering to taking pictures of people and not distance shots of landscapes as im sure there is a big difference from a off the shelf digital cam and one with a whopping big lens the pro's use.
Also, perhaps you have just touched on a...well as it appears....a touchy subject ?
If i bought a reasonable digital camera, say a 9 or 10 mp off the shelf and chose the correct setting and of course got the lighting correct, i could get the same results. Some of the pro's also do some tweaking with the likes of photoshop - i believe. No probs, i can do that.
When we had out photos taken the guy told me its not really the amount of mega pixel that counts but its the lens. Now it was a big lens and in the price range of a couple of K. So can i ask the pro photographers if indeed the results are in the lens ? Remember im refering to taking pictures of people and not distance shots of landscapes as im sure there is a big difference from a off the shelf digital cam and one with a whopping big lens the pro's use.
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My children compete in sports events where they get taken by pro photographers. I find that pro photographers are very obliging when we ask them for the original tiff (or similar) of a photo that we really like. They usually charge a lot less than they'd charge for big printout because their costs are lower. They just tend to want a verbal assurance that we're not going to use the photo for commercial purposes ourselves.
But that said, we quite often buy 5x7s or 6x8s anyway, because the quality is so much higher than anything we can print for the mantlepiece or album ourselves. Their printer is properly calibrated and high quality with the correct matching paper and non-fade inks.
But that said, we quite often buy 5x7s or 6x8s anyway, because the quality is so much higher than anything we can print for the mantlepiece or album ourselves. Their printer is properly calibrated and high quality with the correct matching paper and non-fade inks.
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