Currently, much of my photography is being done in studio for a catalog/retailer. This has honed my skills down to the point where I am taking shots far more reliably and with less and less post production in my digital workflow.

Now, we needed to get some idea of how much of our photographs out on the web (we sell on the web as well) are being ripped or used. One of the ideas was to digimarc them. Seeing as we're really prolific with the pictures and the items are usually one off (one of a kind) we're not as concerned with that. However, we did want to look far more professional and discourage ripping.

I found a shareware product called PhotoMark that has met our needs.

So this post is about asking you a few things:

I was wondering if anyone else has used the product PhotoMark and what your experiences have been.

I was wondering what other software people are using for marking their products and how that's been going for them as well.

What I like about PhotoMark so far is that I can batch mark the photos in one fell swoop before uploading. The interface is like an FTP client that one might use so it's familiar and easily navigated.

Thanks for your input.

Sounds interesting - what's the URL for PhotoMark?

Personally I just use an additional layer in Photoshop with a graphic on, set to 75% opacity. I just drag and drop it into place for the images that I use on my personal site (http:www.markgoldstein.co.uk). Not the most efficient of methods but it works for my relatively low-volume needs...

Does anyone know a way to have your server automatically add a watermark whenever a picture is uploaded, so we don't have to do it manually each time?

There is an option to enable watermarking of photos that are submitted to the PhotographyBLOG Gallery, but this is a global setting that would apply to ALL photos. Therefore it is currently disabled.

Here's the site:

http://www.wekasoft.com/photomark/

I do warn you though, when you use photomark, make sure that you are copying the photo or you'll not be able to remove the watermark. I learned that the hard way.

I've registered my copy for the $28 dollars because it started to mark my photos with a very embarassing "unregistered copy" mark.

You could set your own server to watermark everything as you choose with something like ImageMagick.

I do have ImageMagick installed on my server that's how photo thumbnails are automatically created... how do I set that sort of thing up? Do you know...?

I add mine in Photoshop before uploading (hey, maybe I should do it with ImageMagick??), but you should be able to use "-compose plus" or "-draw text"

Try these links for some clues:
http://www.sitepoint.com/forums/showthread.php?t=145629
http://www.breezesys.f9.co.uk/photography/publishing.html

PerlMagick would allow you to do it via a cgi script.