2006 Cyclocross Nationals Photos Posted

[DeniseGoldberg]

Kevin -
While I'd love to wander through your photos, your placement of the watermark in the center of the photos takes my attention away from the photo.

I understand the need for a watermark - in fact that's on my list of "to do's" for my own photo gallery - but I do not understand why it needs to be in the center of the photograph, preventing us from really seeing the photo. And according to the smugmug release notes on July 28, 2006, watermarks are no longer required to be in the center of the photo. You're absolutely right, it's safter there because it prevents someone from printing the picture and then cutting off the part of the print containing the watermark - but I suspect that its presence in the center of the print will prevent others (not just me) from viewing your photos.

I'm sure that others who are not distracted by the watermark will enjoy your photos...

--- Denise

[Kevin Tokarski]

I put the watermark in the center of the photo so it can't be cropped out. You'd be amazed at what people have done with some of my photos with photoshop, posting on other websites. I've even heard of people who have framed photos in their living rooms with the watermark on it. Sorry it's so distracting. When I first started posting on smugmug I thought the right click copy protection would keep people from taking them, until someone e-mailed me one of my photos to show me how easy it was. A respectable pro once photoshopped everything out of the photo except him on his bike and posted it on his own website.

[DeniseGoldberg]

Kevin -

Good point - although if someone can use photoshop to remove the watermark, I'm not sure that putting a watermark in the center of the photos gives you much protection.

Also - are you aware that the right-click protection only works within a smugmug page? You still have the share photo option turned on, and if you click on share photo, then click on one of the links from that page, you will be taken to a page (showing your photo) that is outside of the smugmug right click protection - so a right click save can be done there. Of course, turning share photo off doesn't protect you from people who undertand that they can grab the url from the address bar in their browser, but at least you aren't handing them all of the link options.

The good news is that you are not making the originals available, and the quality of prints from the "large" images is going to be pretty poor. For comparison purposes, I just temporarily disabled protection on one of my galleries. I did a right-click save of one of the photos from the "large" image. The size of the saved file was 91 KB, as compared to the size of the original at 2510 KB. That's quite a difference in print quality. Yes, you're right, some people still don't seem to understand that making copies of your photos like this is stealing. But at least they don't have access to the same quality print that you are selling.

--- Denise