Jval, Well said, both times. AND, I meant no disparagement of "bad neighborhoods", as I grew up almost entirely in the projects which, before flaming arrows began flying this wway, do NOT NECESSARILY EQUATE TO BAD NEIGHBORHOODDS! In re my friend, he would have been 59 June 27.

jval, I have to agree with much of what you said, i.e., the "vanity" issue, whether or not -- anyone -- produces images "worthy of copying", and/or overconcern with image protection. These are all valid points, I think, but I guess you have to look at this the same way as locking a door to your house, car, or office -- it will most likely REDUCE the possibilities of said property being stolen, violated, or otherwise, but not necessarily PREVENT it from being stolen, etc. Disregarding the (reasonable and valid) vanity/worth aspects entirely though, in another incarcation -- a couple of decades ago, I published artwork in the form of comics/comix, cards, etc., and had on more than one occasion and one particularly nasty incident been the victim of blatant copyright violation, necessitating legal action and lawyer fees that seemed to take on a life of their own and multiply. On the other side, I unknowlingly became the violator of another's copyrights (hiring and trusting a friend in need without checking as I should have), another nasty situation. Of course, any lawyer will tell you ignorance of the law is no excuse and that cost me, too -- time, trouble, and money. Of course I would be flattered by someone using artwork of mine within proper and "fair use" guidelines, but many people choose to ignore those and blatantly STEAL! Though I have posted no artwork here in the about two years I have subscribed, I do have plenty and I thoroughly understand those who have such concerns, as witness the reactions people exhibit when finding that someone has misappropriated work of theirs, and I don't think one should have their personal reactions to such be determined by the concerns of either misplaced ego, paranoia or worthiness as adjudged by others. I mean, THEY created it. Please, I hope this doesn't sound like flaming or biting your head off, just another point of view. I too would rather spend my thought on more creative things, but a late friend, once told me that "a little paranoia is a good thing in a bad neighborhood." That lesson was brought all too dreadfully home by the fact that he was later murdered in a street robbery --- in a bad neighbornood. The web can be a bad neighborhood. Boy, I hope this hasn't gotten too heavy.

This entire thread is interesting to me, especially the watermarking part with Digimarc. Just today I registered with Digimarc, got the 1-999 pictures option plus the Spider option FINALLY putting up a website shortly and years ago had a bad expeerience with copyright infringement. At any rate, testing out the Digimarc watermarking in Paint Shop Pro 6 (PSP6), I found that the watermark seems not to take on some images. On some of the JPEGs, when the image was saved after embedding the watermark and then reloading, some of them had the watermark and some didn't. At least, PSP6 would say "No watermark wsa found on this image" when read watermark was checked. I did think I saw that embed watermark option was grayed out on gifs, but if the image wsa converted to jpeg, or even if the color count was bumped up to 16.7 million colors then the embed and read watermark options would be available. It seems that on SOME of these images (and others) the watermark could be embedded and when saved again as a gif, it -- the watermark -- would not be visible, i.e., "No watermark was found", but if the image was converted to jpeg the watermark could be read -- sometimes! I find this interesting in that there seemed to be no rhyme or reason to it, i.e., why some images would have the watermark and others would not. Of course, it may very well be some very obvious detail I am overlooking. Anyone have any guidance on this? Also, it seems that .bmp images, no matter what their color count, would all have the watermark read after saving and reloading.

She was everything A. Ladd could want.

That's very beautiful!

I got Poser 1 because I needed figures in different poses as reference for drawing comics, specifically a strip about ballroom dancing ("Footlights"). After years of dancing, I have tons of tapes and photos from the web as reference, but I really dislike "copying" photographs for publication, so I got Poser 1 (subsequently 2-4) to "copy" poses from various resources, THEN move the camera to different angles and other settings to use as reference for drawing poses. Prior to Poser I had been using various other meshes (e.g., "Humanoid from Crestline) in Imagine. One thing I had difficulty with was posing two figures in a closed dance embrace (waltz, foxtrot, etc.) because of all the necessary adjustments but it has certainly been worth its weight, as my wife had gotten really tired of holding poses while I taped her from differnt angles.

Pretty fabulous, I'd say!!!

June 31st?

Bring a small spoon....LOL!

Hey there - Greenhaven area South Sacramento.

Character. Good character. Looks like someone you could know.

THAT is absolutely too cool! Great looking character.

I visited your site, Schnaps! That JPEG/GIF cruncher thingee is very cool. And site is on a .to. Is that Togo and how do you like it? Apparently you do, I guess, since you have it, but what is it like, in general, having one like that? Finally getting off the dime and putting up a site, considering lots of possibilities. Thanks. I also love the word "free"!!

Attention grabbing picture I say! Can't wait to see the finished project, though it looks well on the way there. Larry F

I don't think I contributed anything to that success, but where is it? Who published? Where can one buy it? And, hey, CONGRATULATIONS! I know exactly how that feels! Larry F