I have recently been getting a lot of grief from some of the forums i use and i thought i would sound this out on all of them.

I watermark my images, i try to make it as less obtrusive as possible but yet i still get complaints that its there.

Does it really make that much of a difference to looking at an image on a Pc?????????

We are advised time and time again to watermark pictures so they are not stolen from the web and used. Yet users seem to hate them.

what are your views

Nice topic. I think in a word, and without being too inconsiderate, that I just don't like them.

When I look at an image I look for artistic merit. If there's something that obstructs the original then it changes the overall result - it becomes a graphic image beyond a photograph.

To the same ends, I really don't like fake borders or signatures either. I think that they demote the focus of the image itself.

However - and there's always a but - the internet causes issues with sharing of formats. Be this imagery, music, graphics, essays, video - pretty much anything you can name. For many practices (see the whole US writers' strike) this has had serious repercussions that have become legal disputes. For some reason where photography is concerned it has lessened the art; devalued it. 

In my practice what I put on the web is essentially "work" photography - anything else can be a small jpeg representation, which is great if found as promotion. But the true finish is in the print.

It's me that's given you the latest grief then so you'll know where I'm coming from.

I speak now as an artist, a painter, though not a brilliant one. I look on a lot of sites that feature artist's work. Some have watermarks, other's don't and yet, it's usually the ones that don't that are the more famous and best selling artists. Of course, if you want a painting, you want the original, even a print will not suffice so there's no way around that one.

With photographs it's a little different maybe, but ask yourself - if the image size was limited (and on TC it would have to be to fit 256kb) there's no way you could get a decent enough print off it unless it was to fit in the smallest photo frame. Is it really worth spoiling the image by including the watermark? Might be different if they could be copied at 12mps, though. 

In fact, could it be considered for POTW or POTY with such an image included? I doubt it. 

I'm with Mike, I don't feel that you can concentrate on the overall beauty of the shot when there's a watermark featuring in it.

Sorry Filter,

I am with Mike and Woody for the same reasons as they have explained. I hate watermarks, signatures etc.