guh as far as the sceen capture...guh I use that to show others how to do something. I am teaching someone right now how to use psp..and because words are not my thing over IM..I take screen captures of each step..label it with intructions and send it to her so she can ""see"" what she needs todo and what happens when she does it. {the case was showing her how to use hue to target she didnt understand what I was talking about so I had to ""show"" her} I do not know anymore what to do. and if you go to animation shop in psp there is a thing that removes invisable markings in a picture when you save it as an animation. it sucks. the whole thing sucks.

No, the whole thing doesn't suck. It's the people who steal that suck. Just because they use tools and methods that are useful for other things doesn't make the tools suck. Please, let's try to keep this in perspective.

I ment the situation sucks that trying to protect your work is futile and that sucks not the proggies

Any of you ever think of tyring (or do any of you use) Digimarc. I know it has a web-tracking feature (using a search spider) that will alert you when it finds your image on the web. I believe they have catalogued millions of images on web sites. I'm not a still renderer so I've never had the need, but is is a part of a few of my imaging apps. -Tim

Watch out with Digimarc, and other 'invisible' watermarking software. They will not deter copyright infingers. They only make it easier to find and prosecute. To deter such behaviour, you need to have something that is obvious. And which would you prefer: To not have something taken at all, or to be in a stronger position for taking them to court? Digimarc is fantastic if the second is what you are looking for. I'm just not sure that that is what most independant artists are looking for.

Well, actually, law suits (to some extent) are meant to be JUST that ... a deterant. In an ideal world, the scenario would be: everyone would use Digimarc (or other wm technology) and then follow through with a law suit when they found the offending site. Or have the person kicked/banned from their hosting company, etc. or both. Soon word would get around that it was easy to find and track stolen artwork and people were being sued and fined. Would it eliminate all thievery ... no, but it sure would cut down on it. There are many things like this in present day society. Anyway, if I were a still artist concerned about my work in this context, I would certainly watermark as it would give me SOME peace of mind knowing I could find out, to some extent, where and when my artwork was appearing without authorization. That's four cents for me now. :0) -Tim

PS> One other thought ... A more direct detterant (as you were implying) might be to put a notice that this image is being tracked through technological means and any infringment will be prosectuted to fullest extent allowable by law. (Or something to that affect.)

It's incredibly easy to remove a Digimarc watermark. It doesn't take any special ability, knowledge, or technical skill, just a basic understanding of your graphics program and some time to experiment. Both PSP and Photoshop come with come with a Digimarc reader, so it's easy to check to see if the mark is still readable. Sorry to be the bearer of bad tidings. I used to use Digimarc all the time until I found out how easy it is to remove the mark. Combine with the ease of removal the fact that you have to pay for the most basic subscription and it's not a very appealing option for most people (for some, yes, but not for most). bonni