Digimarc for Images is committed to the photography community, especially travel photographers! We like to live vicariously through all the adventures and exotic journeys they get to go on — all in the name of "work." To highlight our committment, we are a proud sponsor of the Travel Photographer of the Year (TPOTY) contest, "The premier travel photography awards and your showcase to the world."

The following banners were provided to Digimarc to help by TPOTY to help showcase our involvement. Can anyone tell us what kind of whale/dolphin that is???

Camera prints, film and slides ability to survive thanks to the physical nature of their materials is pretty common. Keeping in mind that photography only began in the 1820's and we may find that digital photography could be even more durable.

I loved reading this story about a DSLR that spend a year at the bottom of a bay. Not only was the diver able to retrieve images, but he also found the owner of the camera and images using a social network.

A bit more disconcerting is this story of a woman who finds a family photo in Ikea that she posted to her blog. Ikea bought the image from a stock photography company. I was unable to find a follow-up to this story. Most likely the stock photography company paid their base rate for a stock photo if there's no copyright infringement.

My two conclusions:

1. Make sure you erase that SD card really well before you sell off an old camera.
2. Before posting images to the web consider adding a digital watermark like Digimarc for Images and copyrighting them. If your stolen photos are found and have your copyright you could do better than a base rate for stock photos.

 

Digimarc was chosen as App of the Day by Apple’N’Apps.com! We are honored and pleased to be in such excellent company as Apple’s Store app and Mint.com.

House Beautiful magazine first began using Digimarc Discover™ technology in their July/August issue. Their adventure with digital watermarks was a success, and the October edition contained seven watermarks and introduced a new digital Table of Contents section. You can read the full press release here. The momentum continued to build when they announced that their November cover would be their first to be digitally watermarked. The payoff was a fantastic video short that paid homage to early Andy Warhol films. As of late, House Beautiful has also announced that they will begin leveraging digital watermarks in their advertising and marketing beginning in February 2012. Take a peek at the video below of Digimarc Discover in action in their November pages:

 

We’ve had increasing interest by our customers on how to best maintain the integrity of digital watermarks. Here are a few tips and tricks that should help in the long run:

High strength watermarks survive the best.
Make sure to embed your images with a higher strength; this just means you are putting more watermark signal into your image. With our new "Chroma" technology, we suggest using an embed strength of 3 or 4, as the watermark should still be imperceptible. It is also easier for your watermark to survive when you save your final image at a maximum quality setting in Photoshop.

For some reason smartphone manufacturers neglect to tell us that your smartphone camera does NOT take a photo when you tap on the shutter button. The camera takes the photo when you RELEASE the shutter button, or at least it does on iPhone and Android phones that follow the OS specs.

So... when you are trying to get that photo of your kids, pet or a group that's in motion, try this: Place your finger on the shutter button and release it when you see the shot you want to take.

You'll avoid shaking the phone by not tapping on the shutter button. You could get a shot of your friends or kids smiling! Better photos in less than 30 seconds.

Join John Batdorff, professional photographer and author of Black and White: From Snapshots to Great Shots, as he shares with you his vision and straight forward techniques for creating compelling black and white images — protected by Digimarc for Images. Registration is free!

Check out some of John's great photos and read his blog at http://www.batdorffphotography.com.

You may have seen recent news about the Digimarc Discover solution and how it will enable print to become interactive. That was just the beginning; The Oregonian newspaper (in Oregon) launched its new mobile reader application that will deliver rich content to its users by utilizing the Digimarc Discover watermarking technology. News & Tech had a great article about it, so I wanted to say "thanks!" to the editors.

 
Please stay tuned in the coming months when I will post more information about different magazines that will also be inporporating Digimarc Discover.

If you're one of the lucky ones who've discovered the value of using Action Scripts (to digitally watermark lots of photos, of course) and your software of choice is Adobe Elements, you should read Erin's blog at Texas Chicks.

It seems that purchasers of Adobe Elements 9 on the Mac App Store are NOT allowed to install action scripts through the Effects Palette.

Be sure to read Erin's blog (she's an Action Scripting Goddess for those using Elements). Just incase you're lazy... the solution is (a spoiler alert?); buy direct from Adobe or Amazon to avoid this issue.

Thanks again to the Texas Chicks!

With the launch of Digimarc Discover, Digimarc now has two watermarking products for commercial use. While both are based on the same core technology, they address different customer requirements.

A high level way to describe the difference: Digimarc for Images is for digitally watermarking images that will always be digital (usually on the Internet) and Digimarc Discover is for images that will be printed. Now why do you need either of those services for your images?

I just wanted to share a letter to everyone from the Emancipated Artist community. Anyone can sign up; it's totally free... so what are you waiting for?

While hopefully most of you Digimarc blog readers have already visited and joined The Emancipated Artist, some of you may not have. The Emancipated Artist is a Digimarc for Images sponsored online community geared toward helping photographers merge their love of art with tools to market, sell and profit from their creativity.

When you visit, you’ll find:

• The Artist Spotlight where we feature a different member and/or professional photographer every other week.
• The Photo of the Week where we highlight a photo we find inspiring.
• The EA Creative Challenge where members are given a photo theme then encouraged to put their unique twist to it, and share it with the group.
• The Useful Info section where you can access information and tools on how to properly interact with clients, price your work, and build a stellar portfolio.

We love welcoming new members to our growing community, so please stop by and have a look around!

Sincerely,
Khali Lanning