If you cannot contact the copyright owner and get permission, then you cannot use the photo. If I remove the watermark, can I use the photo? No. By altering the photo you are breaching copyright and the owner can take legal action against you for altering/damaging the photo.
If you use a watermarked image on any of your marketing materials, digital or print, without written permission from the rights holder then you are infringing the copyright of that watermarked image.
Understandably, artists have resorted to “watermarking” their images online to prevent others from stealing their work. While watermarking can be a great deterrent, it's not the same thing as a copyright, nor is it a substitute for officially obtaining copyright protection from the US Copyright Office.
If you use a watermarked photo, you use that photo and if the photo is not free, you should pay the price. Watermarked version isn't free, the watermark is a more polite alternative for "PAY!". It's possible that the copyright owner doesn't know, but it's different story.
Generally, a watermark should:
Be placed in a descreet area of the image that does not interfere with the view of the image, but will make it more difficult to remove or clone out. Have limited text. If the watermark is small, then having text will be all but near impossible to read.
According to the law, Intentionally removing a watermark without the owner' s consent is absolutely unacceptable. One is not allowed to make any amends to a product that initially belongs to someone else without their permission.
What does watermark mean? Watermarking is the process of superimposing a logo or piece of text atop a document or image file, and it's an important process when it comes to both the copyright protection and marketing of digital works.
Copyright-free images will have the Public Domain Mark 1.0 or the CC0 1.0 Universal Public Domain Mark. Public domain images do not require any citation. You can obtain public domain images on sites like Wikimedia Commons and Flickr Commons.
You may have heard that changing 30% of an image will somehow rescue you from copyright infringement. But this has no legal evidence. We highly recommend that you not believe this myth. You must take permission from the copyright owner before you use or edit it for commercial, personal, or any other purpose.
An Obvious Distraction
One of the major complaints raised by photographers and viewers alike is the distraction a watermark can create within the image. Some photographers and companies place a large watermark across the middle of the image, verifying copyright but obscuring the subject of the photo.
Asset Protection - Watermarks are used to protect images and visual files from being stolen and used or altered without the owner's permission.
A watermark is a logo, text, or pattern that is intentionally superimposed onto another image. Its purpose is to make it more difficult for the original image to be copied or used without permission.
Note that a majority of images found through Google and on the Internet are copyright protected. You need to be aware that: Stock photos and photos by professional photographers require a licence or payment to use.
Pexels. Pexels stock photos gives you free stock photos that you can use everywhere. All photos are free for commercial use and require no attribution. This site has a variety of stock photos you can use for your business.
Laws Surrounding Image Use on the Internet
The rule is simple: You cannot just pull any picture from your internet search and use it in your branding strategy. Every piece of content (published and unpublished) gains copyright as soon as it is created.
If you edit an image that you didn't create, copyright law still applies. The only way to avoid copyright infringement with images is to create unique works, purchase a license to use an image or find a free-to-use image.
The genuine Fourdrinier watermark cannot be reproduced by fraudulent activity, as the watermark resides only in the original document. Blue security fibers are clearly visible on the surface of the paper while green fluorescent fibers are embedded into the sheet and are only visible when using a UV black light.
Watermarks should be visible enough to provide adequate protection against image theft, but if they're too prominent they'll obscure too much of the image for it to be appreciated at all. Here, prominence is determined through a combination of frame coverage, opacity and style.
Many options are available to remove the watermark from images, such as using Photoshop or hiring professional graphic designers. But these can get expensive and complicated, especially for a beginner. This is where an Artificial Intelligence (AI) powered watermark remover application comes into the picture.