Watermark your photos or documents
Do you sometimes post pictures, video clips or other documents on the Web but are afraid that others will use them or even sell them without mentioning your name? A watermark can’t prevent this, but it can make it more difficult.
Documents
Word. Inserting a watermark (text or logo) into a Word document is easy. In Word 2007, you can do so via Page Layout; Page Background; Watermark. Click Custom Watermark to insert your personal transparent or solid watermark. Granted, such a watermark can easily be removed by others, but still, it can act as a kind of deterrent.
PDF. In PDF you can also easily insert your own watermark. A good tool for this purpose is the free Bullzip PDF Printer (http://www.bullzip.com). When using this printer to convert a document to PDF (via the Print command), you can add your own text in the Watermark tab. You can choose the colour and specify the exact location of the watermark.
Tip. Via the Security tab you can add extra restrictions preventing the document from being printed and/or copied to the clipboard. Commercial solutions such as Adobe Acrobat (http://www.adobe.com/uk/ - free trial version) offer even more security features.
Photos
You can manually insert a logo or watermark into your pictures using any photo editor, but some programs are better suited for this purpose than others. For instance, the popular Photoshop Elements (http://www.adobe.com/uk/ - £77.50; free trial version) allows you to define your watermark as a “brush” which you can then apply to your pictures in one mouse click. A free alternative for batch watermarkingis Exifer (http://www.friedemann-schmidt.com/software/exifer - it hasn’t been updated for a couple of years but it’s running in Windows 7 too). Simply select all the pictures you wish to watermark and determine the look of your watermark via the Image; Insert Watermark menu.
Video clips
Watermarking video clips can be done in most video editors: simply add a second video track which contains your watermark. The popular VirtualDub tool (http://www.virtualdub.com - free) offers special filters for this purpose, such as the free Logo Filter (http://neuron2.net/logo/logo.html). However, VirtualDub can only handle a couple of video formats (including AVI). The commercial Watermark Master (http://www.videocharge.com - free trial, then £43) supports a wide range of video formats and offers lots of effects for your watermarks.
Invisible watermarks
You can also insert an invisible watermark in your photos or videos. The advantage is that such a watermark doesn’t spoil your creations; the disadvantage is that you can’t tell with the naked eye that you’re dealing with a copied photo or video. There are various commercial solutions. For photos, there’s Digimarc (http://www.digimarc.com - from £28; a demo can be found in the Filter menu of Photoshop) or EikonaMark (http://www.alphatecltd.com - free with limitations). This service also offers a dedicated video product: Videomark. These tools allow you to insert and detect watermarks.
Tip. Both Digimarc and EikonaMark run their own tracing services which allow you to scan networks (including the Internet) for material sporting your watermark.
Create your profile to unlock this advice and many more.