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!

Everyone comes across beautiful images and amazing digital art when perusing through the Internet. And many times, professionals run into their own images being used on other websites. I assume that most pros take pride in their work and enjoy showcasing it. Of course, infringement is the inherent danger of putting your prized images out there for all to see. Now, it could be a simple blogger that found your image and used it on a post, but it could also be a commercial website, generating revenue from your property. 

After months of research around this topic, I noticed a common theme regarding what to do when this happens to you. It came down to two key factors: time and money. It is too time consuming and costly to take actions on these infringing folks. So...what can you do?

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.

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).

 

Our digital images blog primarily focuses on, you guessed it... "digital images;" although we occasionally sprinkle in relevant news and tips related to digital watermarking for printed materials and security applications.

Well today is one of those alternate posts. Our partner Complete Inspection Systems has integrated Digimarc digital watermarking technology into their track-and-trace solutions for packaging. Complete Inspection Systems' AutoProof Pro Imaging Suite can embed and authenticate Digimarc digital watermarks.

To learn more about their solution, here's a digital version of a brochure — or you can check out their website.

The question comes up many times; is digital watermarking some sort of fingerprint? The quick answer is no and both technologies are quite different.

Last week I shared a link to website that has a lot of valuable information about copyright and content theft. The author of PlagiarismToday also wrote an article on this very topic. Digimarc also provides a link to an excellent case study on the same topic, which you can download here.

I suspect a few of you have the same problem I have when buying gifts for the holidays. Do you end up giving yourself one or two as well? I've tried to limit this impulse to smaller ticket items, or at least to cool things that I wouldn't normally justify.

Here's a few items and sites of cool silly stuff I'm thinking of buying or doing to help stimulate the economy without breaking my budget.

The Photojojo store has some really cool toys. While the Diana lens is a little too retro for me, I'll probably blog a review of the Jelly phone filters sometime next year. Anyone crazy enough to record a video or photos while riding with the helmet digital camera mount, please please let me know! We might have to share...

If you want to impress the loved ones with your hands-on skills try out Make Magazine's blog, the crystalline Christmas ornaments will show you didn't sleep through high school chemistry after all.

Going green? Check out Lifehacker.com's cool use for those empty wine bottles. If you haven't already discovered Lifehacker, spend a couple of extra minutes exploring this really great site. Warning, it might be hours before you emerge.

FYI, I don't know anyone at these sites, receive anything from them or have any other reason to list them here except that I like them a lot.

Enjoy!

Oh, one last article to explain all this, maybe...

Our friends at ImageSpan have a great product, LicenseStream, and of course they blog about the latest LicenseStream news and offer tips and tricks to content owners.

The recently posted a two part series (can a series really be two parts?) on ways photographers can engage their clients during the holidays. 

My favorite tip is to reach out to potential partners who would be interested in bartering services. 

Adding my two cents to the their blog post, many web sites have remnant advertising inventory this time of year due to increased holiday traffic they are unable to sell. Instead of running low CPM "run of site" impressions they could be running ads to your storefront - in exchange for your images for use in future marketing efforts.

For those who are trying to design their own website and are not web designers by trade I have an interesting plug-in for you to check out. The folks at Medialab are a little crazy and came up with a plug-in for Photoshop that allows you to design a single webpage or a whole site.

I've played with the trial version and found it pretty easy. You basically need to learn their "program language" for labeling layers and a few additional tools that customize and tweak your site's functionality. I'll be honest that creating a quickie test page was simple enough, but I don't have the time to sit back and apply myself to really learning all the tools. It certainly seemed to have all the bells and whistles during my brief tour.

Are you an iPhone owner who enjoys image manipulation, is interested in fun apps, and has some time to kill? Then you may want to download ColorSplash. I recently downloaded the application and started to play around with it at a recent conference – which is what I do when the speaker is incredibly boring...