Re: [Gimp-user] Creating Transparent Text

[Liam R E Quin <liam holoweb net>]

On Sat, 2013-02-16 at 11:16 -0500, Denise Hamilton wrote:
> I am working on a webpage to sell my photography. I am trying to create
> text with my copyright information on the photos so that they cannot be
> copied (pirated).

Note that translucent text watermarks can be removed fairly easily, with
only a slight loss in image quality.

You can make it much much harder by varying letter-spacing slightly, or
using a ripple or wave filter on the text.

It's usually better just to have an opaque signature: it's hader to
remove and can become a part of the artwork.

Having said all that, just go to the layers dialogue and change the
opacity and/or layer mode.

Make sure your URL is on the image - then "piracy" becomes
"marketing" (as if most marketing isn't already a form of pirate
behaviour :D).

If you really want to make it harder, use CSS and have
div.photo { width: 800px; height: 623px; background: url("photo.jpg")
fixed no-repeat; }
in the CSS file, and then use <div class="photo"><img width="800"
height="623" src="1px.gif" alt="" /></div>
(assuming your image is 800 x 623 pixels in size; change the numbers
accordingly) and 1px.gif is a 1x1 pixel transparent gif. Now
right-clicking on the image and choosing "save image" will get the
transparent one-pixel image.

You can go further and use a single-frame video; this can prevent
screenshots on some systems.

You can use a two-frame video, interlaced, and then people who
photograph the screen with a digital camera will likely get a mess.

But why? Legitimate users might well want to use your photo as a screen
background on their computer, and if they do that they will see your URL
and think of your work every day. The more people share the images the
more likely they are to visit your Web site.

So, a small URL in an unobtrusive place and/or part of the composition
doesn't need to be partly transparent. If it's not part of the
composition it's defacing the artwork even if it's translucent.

Best,

Liam

-- 
Liam Quin - XML Activity Lead, W3C, http://www.w3.org/People/Quin/
Pictures from old books: http://fromoldbooks.org/
Ankh: irc.sorcery.net irc.gnome.org freenode/#xml