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Now reading: Imatag protects your images with invisible watermarks 43 comments

Imatag protects your images with invisible watermarks

Published Dec 21, 2017 | Lars Rehm

With advanced technologies such as Google's AI capable of removing watermarks from images, and intelligent upscaling technologies like EnhanceNet, including visible watermarks on your images and uploading them at low resolution are no longer necessarily sufficient safeguards against your valuable images being stolen.

Invisible watermarking could be an efficient answer to these high-tech pirating methods. Imatag is a new service that adds an invisible and indelible watermark to your images, all without any degrading effect on image quality. This allows agencies and photographers to track their work and prove ownership when images are found to be illegally used on the web or in print.

On the Imatag website an online demo allows you to upload your own image, inspect the visual quality of the watermarked image and assess the robustness of the watermark. You can crop, scale and compress the original image to see see at what point the Imatag algorithm loses its ability to detect the watermark.

Another way of testing the system is by registering for a free account which allows you to upload 1GB worth of images. Uploaded images will be watermarked and hosted on the website but not be publicly available unless you make them visible. You can then download a watermarked image, edit it in your preferred image editing software and re-upload the modified image to check if the watermark can still be detected.

During a brief test with a couple of images we found that the modifications required to make the watermark undetectable were so strong that they would severely limit the usability of the resulting image. If you think Imatag could be a useful tool for your photography business but 1GB of storage is not sufficient for your purposes, 10 Euros per months subscription fee buy you 100GB. Special packages for agencies are available as well. More information is available on the Imatag website.

Tags: technology, watermarks

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Andre-ju

I think that for many photographers, the subscription cost for this service would be more than they are actually losing from image theft.

7 months agopermalink

sirhawkeye64

And what's not to stop someone of just taking a screenshot of your image, even at full/high resolution? If the watermark is indeed invisible, then a screen capture program probably wont capture (or at least record) the invisible watermark. I can see where this will keep the honest people honest, but that would be my concern is screen capture software/devices.

7 months agopermalink

tfurax

Of course our invisible watermark is robust to a screen capture. This is what the demo is all about: to showcase our great robustness to commun editing process. Indeed, our watermark is robust to print & scan (even with a smatphone).

7 months agopermalink

HenryEckstein

This took like THREE MINUTES to figure out!

You boost and/or reduce the luminance on any RGB pixel and on the individual Red, Green and Blue colour channel values that are above 240 and below 20 (when using 24-bit RGB colour or 8-bits per channel) in terms of luminance and use a subtractive and/or additive function to find Primary Magenta, Blue/Cyan and Yellow values within either the darkest or lightest areas of any image which you search.

Then, it took like ANOTHER FIVE MINUTES to design the source code for the C++, Basic, Pascal, JAVA/JavaScript AND Python code to remove that watermark without mangling the original image! Sorry but you need to do WAAAAY better….I did all that in less than an hour and DID NOT NEED A.I. but rather SIMPLE DSP (Digital Signal Processing). I'll open source the code!

AND YES it passed your tests!

7 months ago*permalink

jwasturias

I remember spilling some tap water on my negatives in 1991. Definitely identifiable as mine.

7 months agopermalink

Photomatte

Does this new 'invisible' watermark depend on data embedded into the EXIF file, or other such means? What if someone just grabs a screenshot on their PC or does Command-4 on their Mac and only lifts the image itself, not the file? Will this service still work?
I shoot weddings for a living and I use Smugmug for my clients' galleries. I'm sure many of my clients will still download their favorites and post them all over social media. This is why I embed each image (each file, that is) with loads of SEO keywords as well as my copyright info. That way, if my clients do 'share' my images, it actually helps me. So far I haven't had anyone steal my images and use them for profit (ie, as if they were a wedding photographer).

7 months agopermalink

Fujica

Everybody can do this. In fact it is nothing more then writing a text file into an image file. Those who are in the know can see the message, those who are not aware will never see it. They will never search for it either.

The way it works is actually quite simple, and its easy to find how to do this yourself via a Google query.

Don't waste your money on serverspace you don't need.
The scripting to make this 'watermarking' is available for free.

7 months ago*permalink

Charlie Jin

I think that the point is whether someone can remove the watermark (easily).

7 months agopermalink

Gruyo

I don't think they are talking about EXIF data, but actually altering pixel data in a way which is hard to detect for humans but easy to process for their algorithm.

7 months agopermalink

Fujica

No they are not Gruyo - When you add text to an image it is usually NOT done in EXIF, but into the imagefile itself. It is put in a place you'll normally never will look unless you work for law enforcement or special agency.

Its a smart way of tagging images and having a secret watermark or other text.

7 months ago*permalink

PHOTOJOE55

Nobody steals my images. ...that makes me very sad!

7 months agopermalink

obsolescence

Are you so sure about that?

7 months agopermalink

zzzxtreme

Wow this is actually very smart

7 months agopermalink

matthew saville

The ONLY good watermark, is an invisible watermark.

7 months ago*permalink

falconeyes

Every time watermarking is a topic, I cannot but repeat myself ...
Static watermarks are a lack of ingenuity, and not very useful actually. Even if executed nicely as seems to be the case here.

A much better way is to embed meta data about the downloader (IP address, timestamp) into the watermark. So that at a later time, the person violating the original copyright can be tracked down. And if communicated, would prevent people from stealing in the first place. That would be a useful example of a cloud service, actually. Static hosting isn’t.

7 months ago*permalink

RED i

I can grab any image that has meta data and it'll be stripped out after a conversion to any other format. Its security through obscurity.

If you don't want it used with out permission don't put it on the internet and might as well put on a nice unobtrusive watermark on the image to get some free advertising if someone does use it,

7 months agopermalink

tfurax

Imatag watermark is static. Actually, you can watermark the same image several times. This creates several versions of your work for different uses, and being able to monitor each version. We will soon propose such a service at the downloading time.

@RED: The metadata are stored in our registry (EXIF, IPTC, XMP). The watermark ID is embedded in the pixels of the image making the link with the registry. Thus, the watermark ID is robust to a conversion to any other format.

7 months ago*permalink

falconeyes

@tfurax Thanks for your reply
Of course it is possible to have several versions of an image with different watermarks. That wasn’t my point though.
My point was that ANY link like “img src=“ would return a DYNAMICALLY watermarked image, different from any other. A watermark unique within any browser cache. Of course, this requires a certain server muscle. But everything else is just plain uninteresting and destined to fail as a business proposition.

A dynamic server side watermark though could be provided and licensed as a microservice (docker) to image hosting sites such as SmugMug, ShutterStock, HegreArt etc. So photographers can track any copy found in the wild to any particular client who may have purchased the image.

7 months ago*permalink

falconeyes

@RED: You are not getting it. Photographers have no choice but to eventually provide photos to their clients. They normally do this via protected galleries, only accessible to paying clients. Still, these photos are criminally redistributed afterwards, as soon as more than only a few clients had access. I’ve seen photographer friends going out of business because of this. The problem developed over the last 10 years. E.g., the market for erotic photography is basically dead now (prints don’t sell, digital gets stolen immediately).

7 months ago*permalink

RED i

@falconeyes

Sorry but no amount of water marking is going to save your failing business, that's a business model failure.

7 months agopermalink

falconeyes

@RED people who feel its right other people fail due to criminal action aren’t my friends. End of communication.

7 months agopermalink

RED i

@falconeyes

There is no right for a business not to fail, if you are saying you lost your photo business because people stole all of your work that you posted on line you have a bigger problem then the copy right infringes. If you are saying this watermarking technology was going to stop all this and save your business again you have way bigger issues as to why the business failed.

How do you explain all those other successful photographers in the world? What sort of voodoo water marking do they use to keep their business from failing?

7 months ago*permalink

sirhawkeye64

I have to agree with RED on some of the comments made... particularly about the circumventing the watermarking. The same goes for software and most other digital materials. In some regards, the more effort you put into trying to protect it from theft, the more people tend to steal it. Look at Microsoft and Windows. Now, you technically can use a version of Windows 10 (or even 7 or 8) for free without ever buying a license. You'll have an ugly watermark in the side of the desktop screen but otherwise, the OS runs normally (although some features are disabled--like you can't change the background). This is far from the Windows XP anti-piracy measures, where XP would refuse to let you log in if you didn't purchase and activate a license. My point is that someone will find a way around it, but it will keep the honest people honest, but there are people out there that will find some flaw or way to copy the material and get away with it. It's just reality of digital material.

7 months ago*permalink

tfurax

@sirhawkeye64: Please have a try! Create your free account. Upload a picture. Download its watermarked version. Distort it with your preferred image editing software. Check if the watermark is still detected. It is certainly possible to remove the watermark, BUT the image is then so damaged that it is useless. Again, please have a try.

7 months agopermalink

falconeyes

@tfurax,
I really think you are on to something, great technology.
Pls, give my point a consideration too, could change something great into a game changer.

7 months agopermalink

Muskokaphotog

The meta data might help on line but it isn't going to tell me rhat a client printed out their family portraits without permission. A visible watermark also tells the less savvy that the image ain't for free.

7 months agopermalink

desertsp

I remember seeing something like this 10 or 15 years ago in the form of a Photoshop plugin (I think). Wish I could remember the name!

The nice thing is it embedded your actual information, not just a lookup key.

7 months agopermalink

lightandaprayer

Digimarc is the name. The company is still in business but I haven't kept up on it.

7 months agopermalink

RED i

If you already own the image and have the originals does it really matter if someone steals it? Unless this service is constantly scouring the net for infringement not having a nice brandable watermark on say the bottom right corner you're just losing out on free advertising. Besides its much less work to take an image that has no visible branding then to take one, crop out the watermark/braiding and then use it.

7 months agopermalink

matthew saville

You're joking, right?

7 months agopermalink

RED i

You think an invisible watermark gives you more protection than you actually owning the copyright and original files?

Someone sees your image with an invisible watermark and takes it for their own use.

Someone sees your image with a visible watermark and decided to move on as they won't want to be bothered with trying to crop out/remove the watermark.

7 months agopermalink

MyReality

If you own the image and someone steals it, you either care or do not care. If you do not care, end of story. If you care, do you care enough to pursue copyright infringement? If you do, do you want to spend the thousands of dollars it may cost? Not many photographers will.
An ounce of prevention is worth a pound of cure.
Hence, I am in favor of big visible mater marks.

7 months ago*permalink

matthew saville

I was mainly referring to the "it's free advertising when someone steals your photo" line.

7 months ago*permalink

MyReality

@matthew saville - It's only free advertising if the credit goes to you. People stealing photos are not going to give the photographer credit.
People wearing T-shirts with logos on them are giving free advertising, but most people will know who the credit goes to.

7 months agopermalink

tfurax

Visible and invisible watermarks address different goals and are indeed complementary. Visible watermarking warns the user about copyright, advertises your works... but it is easily removed. Invisible watermarking protects your images and enables efficient content tracking.

7 months agopermalink

badi

That's exactly what i was going to say ... just use both watermarking systems :) Actually in my opinion the invisible watermark makes real sense together with the visible one.

But the "Invisible watermarking protects your images" is kind of not really true. It does indeed helps you to prove that the image was yours to a jury/judge, enable content tracking and so on.
But if a thief doesn't see the "invisible watermark" he is just going to steal it, and the "tracking" will help that he is caught easier and faster.

7 months agopermalink

ManfredGrebler

For finding illegal uses an Invisible watermark is no longer neccessary today. There are services searching the net for your images just by image compare.
This has one very big adavantage: It works for all your images that are already on the internet not just for the latest ones.

7 months agopermalink

tfurax

@ManfredGrebler: Not so true. See, for instance, the story of Eduardo Martin ( http://imatag.com/en/blog/2017/09/07/photo-theft-how-to-frame-the-usurper/ ) who easily deluded similarity search engines. Similarity search is meant for ranking images according to their similarity with a query. But it cannot assess that an image is indeed a copy of that work. When you crawl the web, it just triggers far too many false positives.

7 months agopermalink

lathspell

I've uploaded an aRGB image to the demo site, and after generating the watermark the image looked like if the color profile had been removed and the JPEG therefore interpreted as sRGB. Fail.

7 months ago*permalink

tfurax

Oups! This is indeed true for this simple demo (we will fix it). The service Imatag.com should take into account color profiles.

7 months ago*permalink

lathspell

Ok, I can't tell about the actual service since I didn't go further than to the demo site. Because when a demo doesn't work … (You've got a private message with more details.)

7 months agopermalink

semorg

can you at least not verbatim copy the PR language?
It's very unclear how the fees work. Do you need to host your images there? I'm not sure what their model is.
Do you need the their service later to identify your watermark?

7 months agopermalink

tfurax

Images, watermark secret key AND metadata are hosted on our side.
You need the service to identify watermark.

7 months agopermalink

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Imatag protects your images with invisible watermarks

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