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.

Over the last couple of weeks there have been a couple of comments to my post on how to create a script in Photoshop to automate the embedding process.

Specifically, Charmen and Raffi were asking about using scripts in Adobe Elements to automate the embedding process.

Adobe Elements 8 does not support the user to record/create action scripts. About 5 years ago it was possible to take a Photoshop script, export it and load it into Elements. I thought that ability was still available, but haven't been able to find a way to do it. But, while I don't have the solution, I do have a resource.

There have been many past inquiries about Digimarc for Images supporting 64-bit versions of Adobe Photoshop. I'm happy to announce that with the release of Photoshop CS5 for Mac and Windows, Digimarc for Images will automatically be included in both the 32 and 64-bit versions. And yes, this does include our newly improved Chroma watermarking technology as well.

CS5 users take note: Please do not try to install any Digimarc plug-ins from CS4 or earlier as they will be incompatible with CS5 and affect your usage of our service.

I also want to mention that if you need 64-bit support on CS4 for Windows, we'll make it available in the next few weeks. Please contact our customer support for this version of the plug-in.

Over the next few weeks I'm going to revisit some older posts and refresh them. My goal is to tie them together so an overview of workflow solutions are provided to make watermarking images easier for you.

When I used to work on designing identity documents we talked about layers of security, because no single solution can do it all. RFID chips, specialty printing inks, substrates and special design features needed to be combined to offer certain levels of security. Additionally, I will toss in some discussions about free image protection solutions. I have to give some credit to Scott Kelby's post where he mentions a lot of available solutions he likes, including a very nice review of Digimarc for Images. I don't want to review other commercial applications, but will discuss some of the free solutions he mentions like metadata and how to incorporate these into your workflow.

If there's an image protection solution you'd like to discuss, let me know. Let's see if we can figure out the best combination of solutions for your time and money.

I wanted to post a quick blog to let everyone know that Adobe is hosting a launch event for Photoshop CS5 on Monday, April 12th. The event will cover the top 5 new features included with CS5. You can register for the launch event here.

For those of you upgrading to or purchasing CS5, the Digimarc for Images plug-in built into the new release will not need to be updated. Photoshop CS5 already has the latest plug-in, featuring our new "Chroma" watermarking technology (which you may have seen yours truly talk about).