Since this flickr discussion came up again I was peaking over there again to see what the competition is up to these days.

I came across many fantastic shots, offered in decent sizes up to 1200px without watermarks.

I feel like a paranoid idiot uploading unwatermarked stuff - even at 500px width.

The craziest part was that none of those awesome images was picked up by Tineye. Not one. What's up with that?
How come that flickr images are immune to theft? Tiney should pick up at least some sites with those images on there.

Did anyone else make that experience? By now I'm so discouraged to even upload watermarked stuff that I might as well forget about it...

Then dont go looking here
http://morguefile.com/

or here
http://www.freerangestock.com/

I have seen some spectacular shots over there. I guess they just are not in the same frame of mind as us. I dunno.

they are promotional sites for microstock sites, like stckchnge was for stockxprt. I wouldn't call those shots spectacular...

When were those flickr shots uploaded?  It took my images more than a year for tineye to find even one of them.  Tineye takes forever to index them. 

When were those flickr shots uploaded?  It took my images more than a year for tineye to find even one of them.  Tineye takes forever to index them. 

Some of them are 3 years and older. I guess it doesn't matter. Some photographers do use it to direct the visitors to their smugmug site where they sell the prints etc., others just do it for fun.

I just did a search for "people" on flickr and one of the first ones that came us was found on Tineye:

http://www.tineye.com/search/e5dfb35f10f285baf4f39410c61145f437ca0ce3/

I assume that there are some shots on flickr that can be traced via Tineye.

I was just so surprised to see technically amazing images in medium resolution that I couldn't find anywhere else with Tineye. I'm talking about shots with a high commercial value. Maybe I just found a few of them that didn't get snatched yet... 

Either that or the photographer's picked them up and had them removed?  I'm with you though, I'd be too scared to load high quality unwatermarked images on there. 

The "temptation" of (possibly) getting commissioned work that way is very high though.

No idea how I'm going to approach this. I guess I just keep adding my watermark and hope for the best...

Seems like the best way to go about it.  What sizes do you upload your watermarked images as, if you don't mind me asking?

I looked at those links as well and there are some good pictures but not as spectacular as what one could find on flickr.

Considering that some of my mediocre images are being stolen constantly I wonder why those extremely awesome shots on flickr cannot be found by Tineye.

It just blows my mind.

Who of you on this forum is uploading without watermarks? I'd love to know.

I upload with a small logo+url in the corner. All this pararnoia about image theft thru flickr, et.c is useless, stupid, and very net / computer illiterate. First of all most images 'stolen' (so to speak) aren't used in any commercial mean that would generate a sale otherwise. Secondly real hackers can lift pictures off your own machine if they really want to, beleive me... or the stock sites storage servers...

That's why the recent microstock site fraud-sales are very-very suspicious to me. Spending the stolen virtual money to get some penny-sale pictures, that might or might not get them a few more pennies is utterly-totally useless for a hacker, who get instant money or usable items thru chargebacks, buying online, etc... Many of the guys buy the card and account data on the black market. Why on earth would they waste their money and time going thru this process of dl-ing $5 dollar pictures one-by-one, when they usually just get instant money, or rip complete sites with all buttons included? Those guys ripped archicad and that had a hardwer keys.... just total nonsense.

Quote from: click_click on May 06, 2011, 22:18

700px wide - Honestly I don't see a reason why anyone who uses flickr would need higher resolutions - unless they want to give their pics away for free.

That size should be big enough to decide whether the shot is worth buying or getting a different one. Always a learning curve.

Thanks for that.  Yes 700px wide is more than big enough.

Quote from: lthn on May 07, 2011, 05:31

I upload with a small logo+url in the corner. All this pararnoia about image theft thru flickr, et.c is useless, stupid, and very net / computer illiterate. First of all most images 'stolen' (so to speak) aren't used in any commercial mean that would generate a sale otherwise.

Really?  Do you know how many images I find stolen on sold on Zazzle alone?  Others in this forum find them too.

Could you give me a percentage? I bet you it would be less than 1%. What we are talking about is whether those ppl would buy the pics if there absolutely wasn't any other way to get them, and they wouldn't. Most times its just some  wallpaper site to gain popularity for an URL and get some ads. Those ppl wouldn't buy anything anyway. What contributors should worry about (besides getting shafted constantly by the agencies) is that many buyers don't give flying f**k about getting extended licences for usages where they should. That's a real loss there.

...First of all most images 'stolen' (so to speak) aren't used in any commercial mean that would generate a sale otherwise.

I wasn't aware of that. Has there any research been done about this that I haven't heard of?

If someone wants one of my images to use a nice little print on their bedroom wall or as a screen saver/desktop background they better pay me. Otherwise I'd upload my stuff to flickr under the Creative Commons license with free personal use, which I don't.

Secondly real hackers can lift pictures off your own machine if they really want to, beleive me... or the stock sites storage servers...

I'm not arguing that a "real hacker" could or couldn't get the images straight from an agency server and that isn't my issue.

I'm specifically surprised that there are tons of great unwatermarked images on flickr but I know that I don't have to understand everything and everyone.

I'll keep adding my watermark in way that requires major retouching in a relatively small resolution to minimize damage.

... By the way, 1% of my own images being stolen is 1% too many and I'll do whatever I possibly can to try and keep theft down.  Saying "oh well images get stolen, it's a normal part of life" doesn't mean we should make it as easy as possible for the thieves, does it?  Just accepting that it happens isn't good enough for me and probably for many others. 

I know how you feel but realistically we won't be able to catch them all. However, we stay on alert and do what we have to do whenever we find our images unlicensed.

As soon as a photo is sold RF and appears on someone's website it is out there able to be stolen. Nobody is worried about that. I don't see the point of worrying about thefts from flickr.

With all due respect, why do the agencies put a watermark on the images in first place then? According to your statement an image has to be sold once just to be stolen from the original buyer. The same reason, why agencies put a watermark on our images is why I put a watermark on my images on flickr.

My initial concern was the fact that other photographers are uploading unwatermarked images at medium to high resolutions.

Properly licensed images should be used in a resolution not higher than 800px according to most agencies.

I know very well that people who "don't know (better)" upload full high-res images from Shutterstock and make the mistake of using Frontpage to insert an image into a page at 400px width but regardless, the high-res file is on the server and often indexed by Google (in full-res) as well. Things that happen all the time, that we have no control over.

However, I do have the choice of putting a watermark on my images on flickr which makes it less attractive to thieves to perform heavy retouching just to get a low res image. They (the thieves) are more than welcome to move on to other photographers' images without watermarks to rip them off without any efforts. I just don't voluntarily hand out stuff for free (despite the fact that there is a � below the image on flickr - I'm sure that deters A LOT of people...).

I'm working on using a watermark that is recognizable but not distracting the viewer (through the center of the image). Those in-the-corner-fancy-logos are often cloned out using PS5's content aware with one click. That I don't understand, why people even put it there.

Everyone has a different approach to those things.

I found quite a few of my images on someone's Facebook page. I commented on each that I loved those too, mainly because I took those photos myself. What irked me was how other folks were gushing their appreciation with the images and the Facebook page person never said that he didn't actually take the photograph or say that he was merely posting photographs of others that he liked. I emailed him that if he wanted to post the pictures he should properly attribute them. I'm not too concerned because none of them had any stock value.

There is a lot of that on Facebook.  I follow the Vintage Racing interests on Facebook.  I'm constantly seeing my images posted there.  The bright side is ... it has led to many "Print" sales.  I'm going to smile and call it a trade-off.