Ai Watermark Protector

Hi Tim

Are you looking into providing a AI watermark protector. With the speed of development of apps to remove watermarks this is essential for our businesses and protection of images to have this option within the software (See PicTime have released this ability lately).  

Lots of us volume photographers are growing in concern over this. 

If you think it's important, the slight addition of digital noise to a .png watermark can easily be fulfilled by yourself in Photoshop and then used with your sytist site. 

https://pic-time.kb.help/how-do-i-protect-my-water...

Is not a solution to the problem however.

Well,thanks for the advice, I didn't know it yet...anyway I made a trial with a png with drop shadow on text, some lines and 50% noise on both lines and text and watermark is not removed by that App for the moment.

Yours looks similar to my new one Marco .. same technique :)

Hi Tim, sending a new reply to this to bump this up to ask for some thought on an important feature that will be crucial for the future of online proofing. I know Damon with Pixnub (pixnub.com), a well invested software/PS plugin developer, has been hard at work trying to continue to release updates to his anti-AI watermarks he has as one of his software options. His watermarks have been pretty well tested and somewhat effective against AI watermark removers over the last year or two, although I've not used them just due to how much it changes the look of the photos/proofs and is very distracting/over the top....almost annoying from a customers perspective. Just recently he posted on his Facebook group that there is a new watermark remover out there that can even beat all his most current changes to the watermarks, and while the particular software is not free and available to the general public at the very moment and requires a beefy server to run, he admits in the very near 6-12 months he thinks the improved AI code will be out there more available to the general public probably without cost. This poses a huge threat to online based proof based photographers such as myself and many others that use Sytist and other online proofing sites. Those using his more advanced watermarks (that is also a PS action that take a lot of time) or other basic watermarks available on sites like sytist, gotphoto, photoday, shootproof, etc are just not going to cut it as AI will eventually continue to win that battle. What seems to be a great combat to that (and continue to allow people to view their photos without a heavy watermark in general) would be the actual proof site (sytist code) to have a view mode that does not show the entire photo at one time for them to screen shot or save. Essentially, the visible proof photo would have a blur around it except for a small circle or square that the user could drag around the photo to view the photo, but just not the entire thing visible/non watermarked/blurred at one time avoiding a screenshot scenario. The blur or distortion selected would likely be enough to where no AI could rebuild a screenshot with accuracy. The blur strength and the size of the circle/square could be adjustable as a setting based on the photographers preference. I suppose it could also work similar to a before/after slider you see on many sites where you click and drag left and right to see before and after results split screen. For sure what seems like the best strategy moving forward would be something the site does to the photos vs statically pre-watermarking the photos which most people are doing currently that is becoming more and more vulnerable to AI watermark removal theft. I hope the conversation can kick start some ideas on your end  that will make sytist the best option and leader to fight off the digital theft occurring more and more with online proofing. I'm happy to test out anything or give any feedback you may need! 

Sadly there is not a viable solution yet to prevent watermark removals. Models have gotten so good that will take almost any watermarks.

Here is my latest attempt trying one of main stream Ai Models QWEN Image Edit.

Bottom left is my watermarked sytist photo used as input image into the Ai model, top center is print production photo and right bottom is what the ai model output, and it was capable of reconstructing the water marked photo. I’ve tried batches of 100s images and it reconstructs the face with 80% accuracy.

Note to Tim: THIS WAS DONE OUTSIDE OF YOUR SYTIST AND NO SYTIST CODE WAS ALTERED OR MODIFIED