Coinciding with the release of Adobe Creative Suite 4, Oregon-based Digimarc has updated its Photoshop plugin that facilitates image protection and tracking uses. Digimarc for Images ships in-box with Adobe Photoshop and now includes improved resizing capabilities, foreign-language support and expanded Web monitoring services.
The Digimarc for Images plugin offers Photoshop users the ability to embed a persistent but invisible digital watermark into images from within the Adobe application. The watermark communicates copyright information and owner contact details, with the goal of allowing potential buyers to quickly locate the copyright holder to make licensing arrangements.
The latest version of the software includes improved format-transformation, resizing and compression functions, ensuring that watermarks remain with an image through a range of alterations. It also offers support in eight additional European languages—Czech, Hungarian, Polish, Romanian, Russian, Turkish and Ukrainian—expanding the total number of supported languages to 22.
According to the company, use of images on the Internet is growing, which makes it increasingly difficult for photographers to monitor use. To that end, Digimarc offers a search service, which crawls the Web seeking Digimarc-watermarked images and provides customers with monthly and on-demand reports. The service, which has just expanded coverage, enables content owners to track images and pursue unauthorized uses.