I have been thinking about how to kick off this blog. My main focus will be to help you get the best results with digital watermarking without hindering the enjoyment of your images. These topics have volumes of scientific text with loads of technical details about color spaces and complex formulas that remind me of the math classes I took a long, long time ago. The technology is interesting material, but I’ll wait for a request or two for the more in-depth blog topics and will probably bring in some of the Digimarc “big brains” as guest writers.

I have to admit that at first blush digital watermarking might not seem like the most compelling topic, but as this blog evolves I think we’ll all be pleasantly surprised. In the future, I hope to use topics from tech support questions and issues from blog postings to provide useful content to our readers. For the initial blog posts, I’d like to open up the conversation beyond digital images and watermarking.

A very quick background on me... I started editing images in Photoshop 1.0 when it was still in beta, and yes, that it is a long time ago in computer years. The revolution of digitizing images has made me think about images differently, no more minuet brush strokes or adjusted exposures to get to a final image. For simple image editing all you need today is a decent scanner or digital camera and a device that can connect to the internet; the last 2 items could just be your phone. Many image storage/sharing sites have software for cropping, adjusting color and removing red eye. Pretty amazing since 10 years ago that would have required a good computer and expensive software. 20 years ago you’d have to find a color shop with a Scitex workstation or a staff of dot etchers, at least a week or more to produce and at enough cash to buy a small car. My things have changed.

I’ll wrap this up with a little interesting reading on how to create paper watermarks.

• First off, if you haven’t taken a paper making class give it a try it is great fun. You’ll thank the Chinese for developing the process almost 2,000 years ago.
• You first get a pulpy mix together with fibers that like to reconnect when dried, wood pulp works well for paper. Note: Denim jean pulp is a large percentage of the currency paper.
• Next the watery pulp is spread in a thin layer onto a screen with a tight mesh to dry.
• Once dry, you peel back your fresh sheet of paper.
• To embed a simple watermark to your paper all you need to do is alter a small section of the screen’s mesh.
• By changing the direction or frequency of the mesh you change the direction of the pulp fibers as they dry embedding this change into the paper.
• This change can become an embedded design and is easy to see when the paper is held up to a light source.
• Noticed I used EMBED a lot, we’ll be using as we discuss digital watermarks.

Professional paper producers produce wonderful artist watermarks into paper. Just look in your wallet, some of the best ones are in currency and other important documents. You just hold them up to a light to enjoy.