You are planning to use images from the Internet for your project, and you don’t know whether the images are watermarked or not. Many photographers or creators don’t want other people to use their images without their permission. Some creators will give the images for free, but many won’t. To avoid copyright issues, you should know about the owners of the images you are using. After that, you can contact them to ask for the use and their permission. Some will allow you, but others will require you to pay to use their assets.
Many people add watermarks to their photos to protect them from theft.
But you need to know that there are two main digital watermarks people often use to add to their photos. They are visible and invisible watermarks.
How to find a visible watermark on an image
Visible watermark
A visible watermark is often a logo, signature, or a piece of text. Some photographers and companies use their logos as their watermarks. They can reduce the opacity of the logo to make it more transparent and look better with the photos. Other people can design and add text to the photos. They can add their addresses, websites, links, phone numbers to their images and documents. A large number of people will use their signatures as the watermarks, especially professional photographers.
We call it “visible watermarks” because the watermarks are easily seen by human eyes. We can easily detect them on any images or documents.
First, you need to know that the places people often choose to watermark their photos. Many people like the bottom right corner of the image. Others like the bottom left corner. But many people can choose different places because it will depend on the content and images themselves.
You will need an image editor, browser, or software to view the image first. There are many image types: PNG, JPEG, GIF, TIFF…, and not all applications can display special image types.
After that, when you look at the places we mentioned or any other areas on the image, if you find any logos or sentences, words, they are the watermarks. Many owners will make the text or logo more transparent, so sometimes you need to zoom the image to find the watermarks.
Invisible watermark
Invisible watermarks are harder to find and not easily seen by our human eyes. The invisible watermarks are not logos or signatures, and we cannot zoom the image to detect them. To find the kind of watermark, you need to use special software or applications.
Many companies create that kind of software for you to use. You can try to search for more information on the Internet, and you can find the right software for you.
Some software will allow you to add invisible watermarks to your photos and detect them as well.
But this kind of watermark is not so popular, and you can always find the visible watermarks easier on most images.