Thoughts about Watermarking images

[Luciano]

I was not playing around with watermarks and found some ... lets say problems... (not coding, but general thoughts)

• If you have permanently watermarked your images... the watermark will appear also on the thumbnail... (NOT when you watermark first time.. BUT when you regenerate thumbs, or if you are with square thumbs and user wants to recrop his thumbnail -> new thumb will have watermark or part of watermark if it is only partially on the part of the image cropped.)
• If you do a "set image as avatar" the watermark will also appear (though very small and maybe very transparent) on the avatar as the avatar will be generated from the watermarked image.

this is normal.. as the image that is used to generate thumb and avatar has a watermark.. there is NO workaround..

You can try to use a relatively very transparent watermark file that will be hardly visible on thumbnails or avatars.. but thats it...

What I suggest:
Before you permanently watermark your images on a production site..
Make a testinstallation with a couple of images... Test your watermark..
then regenerate the thumbnails.. and see if they are ok..
then test, if you are using square thumbs the cropping tool in editimage.
and finally, test: set image as avatar (in editimage)


Only if the results are acceptable to you, then (and only then) apply the watermark to your production site...


Future thoughts:
Once vbgallery is running smoothly, and there is nothing more we want to add (so thats very very far away) we could add a new feature, "Keep clean Original" so we can remove watermarks... or have users add their own watermarks... but that would require very much disk space (nearly double the space needed)...

Non Permanent watermark
This function is still very limited..
In vbgallery 2.5 it only used GD2 (even for imagemagick users) and did not support gif images.

I looked into it but as generating on the fly images with imagemagick requires creation of tmp images, a small bug will fillup your server very quickly... so it would need very intense testing.. and will not be ready until 3.1.

As of beta2 it will work also on gif images.. (but animated gifs will loose animation)

Be aware that non permanent (on the fly) watermarting is a big stress on the server.. As the watermarked image is generated on every image call!!!

IT is NOT recomended for sites with medium-high or very-high traffic !!!



Luc

[Ramses]

Originally Posted by Luciano

Be aware that non permanent (on the fly) watermarting is a big stress on the server.. As the watermarked image is generated on every image call!!!

IT is NOT recomended for sites with medium or high traffic !!!

Luc

Very interesting didn't know that, thanks Luc.

[s1opp]

I've had permenent wartermarking enable since day 1 with photopost.

A lot of files in my gallery get hotlinked, so I prefer them to be water marked with my site's URL.

The watermark is transparent enough not to be a problem in either thumbnils or avatars/profile pics.

[Chuck S]

Just thoughts there. On the fly watermarking does lay another image over another so it does create more of a load than just displaying one image

[fluentdesigns]

I have not been able to get watermarking to work period with Beta 3. Is it disable or not coded in yet? Any help would be great.

[Luciano]

watermark not working after upgread

Luc

[fba_uk]

cant get mine to work, have pm'd you details