Watermarks

Because visible watermarks are so easy to remove, there is a lot of research into locking provenance information into images. One way is by using tamper-evident metadata, such as the Content Credentials that Tina_Irvine mentioned. Those digital signatures are being developed with many other companies through the Content Authenticity Initiative. More cameras can now write Content Authenticity metadata into photographs from the moment you take them.

At the Adobe MAX conference this month, Adobe demonstrated ideas for invisible watermarks — they are detectable by machine vision, like using a phone camera, but you cannot see them with your own eyes. So there is no visible watermark to remove, but the watermark is still there. This was just a technology demonstration, but if it becomes good enough to release, the video shows that it would be expected to tie into the Content Authenticity verification website.

Hi @Mikelang1953,

I agree that it has gotten easier to remove watermarks. My recommendation would be to add your watermark multiple times over your image, and use lines in an "x" shape over your work.

If you don't want to take away from the appearance of your photo: Along with your standard watermark, you can also hide a small logo/icon within your work where it won't generally be noticed by anyone except for you.

Please also check out Content Credentials: https://helpx.adobe.com/photoshop/using/content-credentials.html

Hope these ideas help 🙂