I sure wish I could have written a "Complete Photography Guide," but Lifehacker did such a great job it seems silly for me to duplicate (wishful thinking as well I should add).

So if you want to learn:

• How your Digital Camera works
• What the automatic settings are supposed to do
• Manual settings – explained in English
• Some good tips for composition – if you don’t know the rule of thirds, now’s the time
• Post production – lots of good info, just hope you have Photoshop

Be sure to check out their links under additional resources at the bottom of the main page. If you’re looking for hardware, a NAPP membership will deliver good deals in addition to their Photoshop tutorials.

For hardware reviews, I like DPReview.com and friends like Steves-Digicams.com. A game changing possibility that was just anounced is Lytro's really cool lens technology. Hopefully this recommendation won’t look too silly in a couple of years.

And of course, don't forget to watermark images you post to the web and those you print!

In the interest of full disclosure: Digimarc and I work with the NAPP folks, but all the other websites mentioned are ones that I just happen to like.

"Discussions" regarding visual watermarks; those lovely "embossed" copyright symbols, artist signatures and website listings you see on many artist portfolio images can be entertaining. Thomas Hawk has a particularly good rant discussion going in his blog "On Watermarks and Signatures" and his "You Are a Thief" motif is an excellent example of going over the top with a visual watermark. It looked like fun, so I made my own.

As Thomas Hawk points out the primary issue really comes down to overall purpose:

• As Thomas Hawk feels about it, are you like many just making "an advertisement for your work?"
• Are you using visual watermarks like "photo signatures to stop the 'photo thieves?'"

Are you in marketing? If so, you've probably heard about QR Codes by now (especially if you've read a few of my last posts) and my guess is you either love 'em or hate 'em. Either way, you should know that a digital watermark can provide the same outcome but without the clunkiness.

I ran across this great article by Lauren Goldstein that basically says digital watermarks are QR codes, but without the clunkiness. That is so true! Her website is focused on B2B demand generation. Read the article and learn how digital watermarks can be used for B2B demand generation.

Greetings from Mobile World Congress 2011 in Barcelona Spain. This conference is the largest gathering for anything related to mobile and yours truly was there, not only to witness the swarm of 55,000 people, but to launch the Digimarc Discover Online Services Portal (OSP). We had our own booth right in the App Planet, where many of the folks that stopped by thought we were the coolest new technology around. You can see some panaromic photos of the the entire show right here.

With the Online Services Portal you can now turn your printed content into new rich interactive experiences, and all of it can be done directly from the portal. That's right, just create a free acount, watermark your image, identify the URL that the image will link to, and select when and how long it will be active. Once your watermarked images are printed, they can be read using our free Digimarc Discover reader, downloadable from the iTunes App Store or the Android Market. No barcodes cluttering up your layout. Setting up an account is simple and during our Open Beta ( through May 31st 2011) you can turn your printed content interactive for free. So what are you waiting for? Go to www.digimarc.com/portal to get started!

I first want to apologize for the recent lack of activity here on the blog. There's good reason though as we here at Digimarc have been very busy and are extremely excited about things to come.

You may have noticed that we've made a few minor changes to the blog site and have welcomed a few more authors (see to the right). Yes, Don and I are going to continue to share with you lots of valuable information about Digimarc for Images, but also wanted to expand the the focus of the blog to better showcase Digimarc's vision for a world where intuitive computing is part of our everyday lives. I touched on this briefly already in my previous post "Digimarc Discover: The Future" but now we'll have more experts who will be able to help keep us better informed.

Watch this amazing video here.

 

I have yet to pull the trigger on a new camera; a little lost in research and all the options. So what to do?

The iPhone4 has come to come to my rescue. Apple introduced an HDR photo option in the iOS 4.1 update. While it won't make every photo a work of art, it sure can help. "What's HDR and how can it help me?" you ask...

Many moons ago I blogged about people's misconceptions regarding digital watermarks and how often they're misconstrued for visual watermarks. (You can read that choice post here if you like.) I failed to mention that yes, you can add both a visual and digital watermark to your images. 

There are quite a number of available visual watermarking applications out there, so choose carefully (for onesy-twosies, we recommend just using a layer in Photoshop, but there are also automatic tools out there). However, when it comes to digital watermarking, Digimarc is the expert, so don't search any further. Don't forget though, the visible watermark, which is most often text or some sort of a logo sitting on top of your image, can negatively impact the visible quality of what you want to showcase. 

I recently ran across this About.com article that actually talks about "How to Watermark Your Photos" and they give you many options to choose from. I found it pretty accurate, so if you have time... check it out here.

Later this week Digimarc will be setting up their booth at Photoshop World. We look forward to meeting our customers face to face...

I hope everyone took the time to read my previous post "Take Action When You Find Your Content Misused." All that good stuff is about to become reality for Digimarc for Images. That's right, the integration is almost complete. We'll host a webcast on this very topic, September 8th, and you can register here. 

The agenda:

• How Digimarc and LicenseStream's joint enterprise solution for stock photography agencies, media companies, museum and archives will soon benefit freelance photographers and small business owners
• Overview of LicenseStream's integrated key features including automated remedy options: License Content, Request Attribution, Issue Take Down Notice
• View a live demo of the new capabilities within the Digimarc for Images customer dashboard
• Workflow and best practices recommendations
• And more!

Hurry up and register now, its totally free!

Layers Magazine recently did a review of Digimarc for Images. It's good to see such a great magazine include us in their review section. You can read the review here. I must make mention the review was written a little while ago, and states there is no 64bit support. But as many of you may know already, we have a 64bit version available now. You can get it free by going to our downloads section. It's also built into the Adobe Photoshop CS5 release, so no need to update if you have CS5. 

For those of you who are users of Adobe products, Layers Magazine, along with the website can be a great resource. They provide videos and tutorials that cover almost everything. Check them out here and sign up for a free digital version of the magazine.