To Watermark or Not To Watermark?

[Tomsde]

I will be posting some new cards online to share with people in the near future. In the past I posted images in a lower than acceptable resolution for accurate printing. My question is, do you think it's enough to do that, or is watermarking a better deterent to piracy. I spend a lot of time on my artwork and don't want it stolen. What do you think? Should I also add a watermark to protect my intellectual property? I understand that some people on here have had problems with their artwork being stolen.

 

[Alta]

I think you should go with the watermark. Images on the internet seem to be regarded as free for the taking.

 

[AJ]

I'd watermark.

 

[nikkipeachy]

I've never created a deck, but I am a professional photographer and always watermark my images before putting them online. There are too many possibilities for them being stolen.

 

[GryffinSong]

Another ditto for watermarking. Or at the very least, a copyright notice somewhere that can't be easily cut off.

 

[gregory]

Another vote for watermarking. Remember Kat Black

 

[Alta]

Moderator note:

Some off topic and rather baffling posts have been removed.

Alta
Moderator

 

[Luna-Ocean]

I will be posting some new cards online to share with people in the near future. In the past I posted images in a lower than acceptable resolution for accurate printing. My question is, do you think it's enough to do that, or is watermarking a better deterent to piracy. I spend a lot of time on my artwork and don't want it stolen. What do you think? Should I also add a watermark to protect my intellectual property? I understand that some people on here have had problems with their artwork being stolen.

Hello

I think even when putting a water mark on your images might still be risking it, also keep your images to a very poor jpeg quality just enough to show it, i've noticed another poster recently on the TCB putting up their images that could be at risk because of the quality and the images are quite large, please be careful.

 

[Tomsde]

Well I'll design a watermark and put it on the samples and only have the cards at a low resolution. I do want to promote the deck, but I can't do that if I can't share the images online. This shouldn't be too hard to do; and I'll be sure that the placement is such that it can't be cropped out off of the card and still have a useable, printable version. Another thing I can do is to not include images for all the cards--but I'll have to think that over carefully. I've enjoyed some major artists posting their cards here and people's reactions.

I am eager to share my artwork with this community and my goal is to design a deck which people will enjoy using in the future when it's completed. I'll be putting up an announcement thread soon.