Imatag Uses Invisible Watermarks to Protect Your Photos

Imatag is a new service that uses invisible watermarks to protect photographs from copyright infringement. With the development of AI technology that can easily remove physical watermarks, more covert solutions could be a solution for photographers looking to identify and prove ownership of copied images online.

Once protected, Imatag will also track your photos on the web. You can use the website to see where your photos are found online and take appropriate action.

The website has an online demo you can use to try out the technology. You can upload your own image, allowing you to check it out with a magnifying glass and compare the original with the modified version. As you can see from the comparison images below, the watermark is invisible.

You can then adjust the JPEG quality, size, and crop to see if Imatag can still identify your photo via its watermark.

Very small sections of the image will not necessarily be identified, but you can still find surprisingly small crops with the watermarking technology.

Sections of the same size, but in the darker background with little detail, were not identified.

At a first look, the technology seems impressive. Identifying an invisible watermark within such small and low-resolution images is clearly something that could make a real difference when battling copyright infringement. Infringers are often modifying and cropping photos, but this could be a weapon that is resistant to that.

You can register a free account with Imatag, which allows you to upload up to 1GB of photos. If you need more storage, premium accounts with 100GB of storage are available for €10 per month (~$12).

(via Imatag via DPReview)