5 Invisible Watermark Software to Stop Image Theft For Good
My search for the best invisible watermark tool started when a friend of mine, a talented designer, once discovered his work on a big website, no credit, no permission.
Watermarks were cropped, and right-click blockers were useless against browser tools like Firebug that can monitor HTTPS and reveal the image’s URL.
That’s when I realized invisible watermarks were the answer. They’re discreet, provide proof of ownership, and make takedowns easier. Here are a few reliable tools I found
Invisible Watermark Software
Below, I explain what the best watermarking tools we found do, showcase their features, and explain how you can use them for content protection.
1. Pixsy – Comprehensive image monitoring and anti-piracy protection
Pixsy is a leading platform for digital rights management, offering robust image protection through forensic watermarking.
It allows photographers and creators to protect their work and track its usage across the internet, making it easier to address piracy.
- Image Monitoring: Tracks how your images are being used across thousands of websites.
- Anti-Piracy Measures: Helps detect unauthorized use and offers tools for easy takedown requests.
- Supported Formats: Compatible with JPEG, PNG, and more, ensuring versatility.
With Pixsy, you get more than just watermarking. The platform also provides the ability to file legal claims against unauthorized use, making it a great choice for comprehensive digital rights management.
2. Digimarc
Digimarc’s digital watermarking technology provides secure, invisible identifiers for various media types, helping businesses protect their assets.
It integrates seamlessly with widely used software and supports multiple file formats, ensuring versatility across images, audio, and video.
- Formats Supported: JPEG, PNG, TIFF, WAV, MP3, MP4
- Seamless Integration: Works with tools like Adobe Photoshop and Illustrator
- Versatile Use: Applied to both raster and vector images, audio files, and videos
It integrates smoothly into existing workflows, enhancing security without disrupting the creative process.
As for the cost, Digimarc offers customized pricing based on usage and business needs, with flexible plans to suit different scales.
3. Imatag
Imatag offers an invisible digital watermarking solution designed to protect your visual content and ensure proof of ownership.
It’s an ideal choice for photographers, artists, and businesses that need secure and tamper-proof content protection without altering the image’s appearance.
- Invisible Watermarks: Adds pixel-level embedding watermarks without disrupting the design.
- Forensic Watermarking: Perfect for tracking and detecting unauthorized usage across the web.
- Easy to Use: Integrates with existing workflows to streamline content protection.
Imatag helps you stay on top of your image monitoring efforts by providing detailed reports on where and how your images are being used. Whether you’re looking to prevent piracy or enforce copyright protection, this invisible watermark software is a powerful, non-intrusive solution.
4. Icemark
Icemark is a shareware product that can embed an invisible watermark into digital images. It’s a paid product, costing $49.95 for a single license.
The tool signs the images with a private key that is known only to you. It offers 3 types of watermarks:
- identification: just watermarks the image as yours
- image ID: also lets you add 3 indicators, such as “Restricted Use”, “Do Not Copy” and “Adult Content”.
- text: works similarly to image ID, but lets you enter your own text.
Batch processing is available in File menu where you can automatically process multiple embeddings or detections.
Images that are watermarked with Icemark are resistant to common image editing operations such as compression, distortions, and cropping.
To detect the invisible watermark signed by Icemark, load the image into the program, click the magnifying glass icon and it will tell you if the watermark is detected or not.
Make sure the correct private key is entered before detecting the watermark.
5. OpenStego
OpenStego is an open-source application that can watermark images using an invisible signature. Using it is very straightforward:
- The first step is to create a signature file based on the passphrase.
- Then use the signature file to watermark the images.
OpenStego runs on Java, and the digital watermarking feature is still in beta. The tool is compatible with Windows and Linux, and the latest version, OpenStego 0.8.6, was released on January 30, 2023.
As an open-source project, OpenStego allows users to access its source code for transparency and customization. It is widely used by the general public for digital watermarking and covert data transmission.
With so many crafty and talented content thieves out there, it’s become clear that protecting digital work is more important than ever.
Invisible watermarks have become a game-changer for me, providing a discreet but powerful way to safeguard images and ensure proof of ownership, all without altering the design.
If you’re looking to further improve your image editing workflow, consider checking out how to open PSD extension files without Adobe Photoshop or compare the differences between two identical-looking images. Additionally, if you’re in the business of printing, finding the best sublimation software could be a great step forward in securing your designs.
The problem with digimarc is that it adds a film of grain to the entire image that can degrade the image quality, so I am looking for some way to embed an invisible copyright in the middle of the photo that would identify my ownership in the event of a lawsuit. It would also be nice if the image would self destruct if hacked, lol, but that is probably asking too much. Tracking would be nice, but I am afraid that I would be chasing hackers all day and not getting any work done. Really, if there was a tool that would prevent the image from being downloaded in the first place, that would really be a good solution along with an invisble copyright text embedded that could be used to identify ownership. I deal with thousands of images a year and right now I am simply uploading them with very low resolution. We actually allow our images to be used freely, with a credit by line, for noncomercial / nonprophit use for illustrative, historical, community type websites, which is a good source of advertizing. The problem is the thieves that use robots to gather images on a mass scale and then they end up as stock photos. I saw this once on a stock site where a user did this with a robot and managed to upload several hundred thousand images, including some of ours. Although many of them were crap because the robot couldn’t distinguish art from garbage. They all had the same generic popular key words like art, music, etc. Fortunately, they were all removed by the site, but not after he had made a boat load of money at 25 cents a download. So, today I am looking for the best solution, if anyone has one, please let me know.
I would be very sure that Digimarc does what they say it will do, After years of using Digimarc I have found poor quality watermarks or none. After proofing my pictures and I am happy, I add the watermark, I used to use 2 but after having problems with seeing or the software IDing or not, I went to 4 yet it still remains a very big problem to have the watermark remain after the initial install of the mark and age make a large difference. Very dissatisfied.
Looking for a solution now.
Just a short Thank you note to everyone for all of the suggestions while I realize that anyone can grab our work, I would like to make it as hard as possible. Thanks again and be safe.
Is there a program that can put unremovable transparent watermark on a photo?
Photo Watermark does exactly what the name suggests – it lets you add watermarks to photos – but the types of watermarks you can add are quite varied.
Not only can you add custom text as a watermark (including changing the font, size and color), you can also use your signature (or any other hand-written text) as a watermark by writing on the screen.
You can also apply stickers, a timestamp, a location, a mosaic effect, or ‘graffiti’ (which basically just lets you go wild on your images with a digital paintbrush). Whether you want to protect your photo or just log when and where it was taken, there should be a tool here to suit.
Photo Watermark is free, but it’s quite heavy on adverts. For $0.99/£0.89 per month you can get rid of them, but unless you’re adding watermarks to a ton of images it’s probably not worth it.
@ms Regarding using visible watermark, uploading smaller resolution to internet while retaining larger files. I feel invisible watermarks, such as Digimarc with internet search is very helpful to provide more peace of mind when you are actually selling larger high quality images — not just posting them online.
Thank you!!! I just held down the left touch pad and powered on. Vane right out.
Nice useful post, Ray.
Now this is amazing
Use a software for usual watermarking….plus this for the invisible watermarking.
This is an interesting idea, just like digimarc, that also applies an invisible watermark, but you can also make it noticeable.
As a photographer myself, I’d rather have a visible watermark, that way it helps to deter them from downloading it since they know it will distort the image when trying to photoshop it out.
But then again – you don’t watermark any high resolution image, you always keep the original and optimize the new one for web so it’s small. Then if someone does try to say the image is theirs, well, you have the original as proof and they have nothing.
Good Post Ray.
Thanks Raymond.
Thanks Raymond for this tip!!