Digital Watermarks for Images and Video - Books, Journals, Magazines, Catalogs, Article Reprints | The Sheridan Group

Amidst all the talk and thought about Digital Rights Management and publishing models, I want to draw attention to a line of products/services that provide security for your images and videos. Several software companies have made significant advances in fashioning anti-pirating security software. This is an important step forward as STM publishing business models continue to accept and adopt graphical abstracts and video into the family of scientific content of record.

The technology of digital watermarking involves embedding a digital ID within the pixels of an image in order to identify ownership or establish authenticity. The digital ID can be visible – where an easily seen logo is displayed somewhere in the image. Or, the watermark can be invisible – where the ownership data is blended as noise directly with the pixel data of the image rendering the digital ID nearly imperceptible.

To create and manage digital watermarks  Digimarc offers an Adobe Photoshop plug-in called “Digimarc for Images” and also a free digital ID Reader for Windows. You can check out those tools at this site: http://www.digimarc.com/DigimarcforImages/downloads.asp

And, for instruction about how to actually use the watermarking tools view a tutorial video that explains more about the workstation procedure.

There are several companies that offer digital watermarking products and services. You may want to investigate VidLogo or IceMark or AiS Watermarker for both visible and invisible watermarking technology solutions.

Here is a short checklist as you consider software options:

• Do you want visible or invisible watermarks?
• What trace and collect methods and tools may be helpful to gather usage information after your image or video has been released for distribution?
• Will you ever need to edit the watermark? And, how durable do you need the watermark to be? (Ranging from easily deleted to nearly indestructible.)
• How automated should your solution be?

Check this blog for future posts as we continue to explore protection and monitoring technology for STM journals content.