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MarniLol
Participant
June 29, 2025
Answered

Help! My Clients are Using AI to Remove Watermarks and I'm Losing Control over Art/Profit in Post

  • June 29, 2025
  • 5 replies
  • 2556 views

Clients are using FREE AI tools to remove their watermarks from my online galleries and aren't ordering finals (and thereofre aren't paying for them and are color correcitng or worse- Not color corrrecting and sing/posting.  Pixieset to showcase images inhgi res no mater how small I make them. 

I'm thinkin low res proof sheets would resolve this- But how do I get my watermark and the proof sheet done in photoshop without hours of extra work?  Also, how would you deliver the proof sheets?  (gmail?  dropbox?).  Quite upsetting- it feels like I've been stolen from - ouch!  And I'm concerned about how time consuming this newprocess could be!  I can't charge more and include- in my market, noone would pay more and i'm already doing too much for too little (modeling industry, kids fashion, etc)

Correct answer D Fosse

As John says, this has been around sine the internet was invented. Keep in mind that you wouldn't sell to these people anyway, so you're not losing income. It boils down to how much they damage your professional reputation. So in a way, the watermark only makes it worse. The watermark itself doesn't change anything legally. It's still illegal with or without a watermark. 

 

A much more efficient way to prevent illegal use is to post/send out only low resolution images that can't be used for what you're selling. That's what most people do.

 

Copyright is automatic according to the Berne Convention . If you made it, you have copyright. It doesn't need to be marked in any way and a copyright symbol is not required. 

 

The United States is a special case, as I understand it the work needs to be registered in order to claim financial damages in court. This isn't required in any other country. But the copyright itself still applies.

5 replies

Engine Collective
Engine Collective
Participant
July 23, 2026

Following the "low res proof sheets" direction others mentioned — that's basically what I built ProofingGallery for (Lightroom Classic plugin, full disclosure it's a paid product, enginecollective.studio/proofinggallery). It exports a self-contained gallery with your own watermark applied automatically, so there's no separate Photoshop step for each shoot — no hours of manual work like you're describing. You also control how low-res the exported images are, so you can size them down as much as you want for proofing specifically. And since it's one file rather than a hosted gallery, you're not paying for or setting up a separate platform just to show clients their proofs — you send the gallery file however you'd normally send a large file (a shared link, file transfer service, etc.), and their picks come back as a small file that's always fine over email.

Worth knowing though: no watermark, custom or otherwise, is truly immune to AI removal at this point — what actually helps more is keeping proofs genuinely low-res and the watermark large/covering enough of the frame that removal leaves visible artifacts. Happy to go into more detail if useful.

D Fosse
Community Expert
D FosseCommunity Expert
Community Expert
August 20, 2025

I never really understood the point in watermarks. It doesn't change anything legally, the copyright applies with or without it. Most of them are easy to remove if you're determined.

 

The efficient way to avoid theft is to only post low resolution versions publicly, which are basically useless anyway.

C
Ciccillotto
Inspiring
August 20, 2025

Se cercate un buon metodo, Pixnub ha creato un plugin UXP per questo scopo. Si chiama AI Proof Watermark e dovrebbe essere gratuito. Questa è la pagina di download.

https://pixnub.com/software-downloads/

 

Video

https://youtu.be/CCW7oRf9gR8?t=1s

D Fosse
Community Expert
D FosseCommunity ExpertCorrect answer
Community Expert
June 29, 2025

As John says, this has been around sine the internet was invented. Keep in mind that you wouldn't sell to these people anyway, so you're not losing income. It boils down to how much they damage your professional reputation. So in a way, the watermark only makes it worse. The watermark itself doesn't change anything legally. It's still illegal with or without a watermark. 

 

A much more efficient way to prevent illegal use is to post/send out only low resolution images that can't be used for what you're selling. That's what most people do.

 

Copyright is automatic according to the Berne Convention . If you made it, you have copyright. It doesn't need to be marked in any way and a copyright symbol is not required. 

 

The United States is a special case, as I understand it the work needs to be registered in order to claim financial damages in court. This isn't required in any other country. But the copyright itself still applies.

    John Waller
    Community Expert
    John WallerCommunity Expert
    Community Expert
    June 29, 2025

    Watermark removal has been around since watermarks were invented. AI just makes it easier and faster. You have to adapt. Low res is one option. Or make your watermark very hard to a) detect and b) remove,

    Same as Governments adapt to counterfeiting of currency.

     

    Google techniques to make AI watermark detection and removal harder.

    https://community.adobe.com/t5/photoshop-ecosystem-discussions/prevent-ai-watermark-removal/td-p/13724601

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