Show HN: Watermark.js – Functional ES6 lib for watermarking in the browser • Hacker News Board

Re: Show HN: Watermark.js – Functional ES6 lib for watermarking in the browser

#11

Post by Drakim » Thu, May 14, 2015, 1:46 PM UTC

scaturr wrote: post #4

jarnix wrote: post #3

Watermarking in the browser seems counter productive though.

How so? Being able to generate watermarks in the browser is one less thing a server has to do right? Especially if that server is in a shared environment without image libraries or lacks tools for uploading things concurrently.

Anything that happens client-side is out of your hands.

An potential image thief could just make his browser not run the watermarking function if he wanted. What we are essentially doing here is handing the image thief an image, and then handing him a watermark, and then telling him to watermark the image himself (with no guarantee that he will actually do so).

Re: Show HN: Watermark.js – Functional ES6 lib for watermarking in the browser

#12

Post by austinsmorris » Thu, May 14, 2015, 1:49 PM UTC

0xff00 wrote: post #10

scaturr wrote: post #4

Earlier quoted context omitted.

How so? Being able to generate watermarks in the browser is one less thing a server has to do right? Especially if that server is in a shared environment without image libraries or lacks tools for uploading things concurrently.

It defeats the point of watermarking since someone with the technical skills can just recover the non-watermarked image.

I think the point is to create watermarked images in the browser for later use. Once that's done, you only show users the watermarked version. This is for administrative use, not end-user presentation.

Re: Show HN: Watermark.js – Functional ES6 lib for watermarking in the browser

#13

Post by scaturr » Thu, May 14, 2015, 1:51 PM UTC

nathankleyn wrote: post #9

scaturr wrote: post #8

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You are correct. This would serve the purpose for many users who don't know how to go digging around for urls in JS, but more importantly its a tool for generating them on the client so a server doesn't have to - say for a CMS?

That's all fine until Googlebot-Image comes along, collects up all your unwatermarked images, and displays them in search results for the world to use. I can see this being useful for running as a batch process in Node/IO.js and uploading to, say, S3.

Well what if you batch it in the browser? It is quite possible to use file inputs to generate watermarked images without ever storing the image you are watermarking, and then upload the result.

Re: Show HN: Watermark.js – Functional ES6 lib for watermarking in the browser

#14

Post by scaturr » Thu, May 14, 2015, 1:54 PM UTC

0xff00 wrote: post #10

scaturr wrote: post #4

Earlier quoted context omitted.

How so? Being able to generate watermarks in the browser is one less thing a server has to do right? Especially if that server is in a shared environment without image libraries or lacks tools for uploading things concurrently.

It defeats the point of watermarking since someone with the technical skills can just recover the non-watermarked image.

Watermarking by urls or existing images would leave the non-watermarked image open - you are correct. This case is still fine for most users, but watermark.js also allows the use of file inputs. You can grab an image from a file input, then watermark, then upload it. This would leave the non-watermarked image closed off to anyone else. This would be handy if you need to generate watermarks in a CMS backend or some other administrative tool

Re: Show HN: Watermark.js – Functional ES6 lib for watermarking in the browser

#15

Post by nathankleyn » Thu, May 14, 2015, 2:02 PM UTC

scaturr wrote: post #13

nathankleyn wrote: post #9

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That's all fine until Googlebot-Image comes along, collects up all your unwatermarked images, and displays them in search results for the world to use. I can see this being useful for running as a batch process in Node/IO.js and uploading to, say, S3.

Well what if you batch it in the browser? It is quite possible to use file inputs to generate watermarked images without ever storing the image you are watermarking, and then upload the result.

Yep - that's totally possible. Actually, now you phrase it like that, I see what you mean about using it that way for a CMS, and it's an awesome idea.

Re: Show HN: Watermark.js – Functional ES6 lib for watermarking in the browser

#16

Post by aikah » Thu, May 14, 2015, 2:33 PM UTC

Would be more useful on the server. I don't know how it is impplemented, I guess it uses canvas, fortunately there a few serverside canvas implementations available.

Re: Show HN: Watermark.js – Functional ES6 lib for watermarking in the browser

#17

Post by dspillett » Thu, May 14, 2015, 2:34 PM UTC

jarnix wrote: post #3

Watermarking in the browser seems counter productive though.

If there is a way of saving the result and posting it to the server (caveat: I have no idea if there currently is, there almost certainly isn't in a "95 of web users will have a compatible client" sort of way) then you could use this to remove some CPU load when accepting images that you want to watermark before presenting to other users. If it is your image being watermarked you are unlikely to circumvent the process.

Re: Show HN: Watermark.js – Functional ES6 lib for watermarking in the browser

#18

Post by dheera » Thu, May 14, 2015, 2:44 PM UTC

valuegram wrote: post #6

I thought the point of watermarking is to prevent people from using your images without your branding, but if it's done on the client side, it's easy to circumvent: http://brianium.github.io/watermarkjs/img/shepherd.jpg

I guess it depends on the person. For example, I release all my photography as CC-BY-SA. So I'm okay with anyone either (a) using my watermarked images as-is, without needing to write a credit separately, since the watermark is effectively an attribution OR (b) using my unwatermarked images for whatever CC-BY-SA compliant derivative works, and display attribution in some other appropriate fashion.

So I display watermarked images in the browser by default, primarily for convenient sharing without worrying about attribution, but make the unwatermarked images available for download if someone needs it for (b).

So this might actually be useful for my use case.

Re: Show HN: Watermark.js – Functional ES6 lib for watermarking in the browser

#19

Post by simonhamp » Thu, May 14, 2015, 3:12 PM UTC

The only real use case for this is as a watermarking tool that the end user uses to place his own watermark on his own images and as has been mentioned could provide a pre-composited file generated on the client to the server for later public consumption.

Of course, this doesn't prevent the user uploading an image that they don't have the rights to and watermarking it as if it was their own... that's a whole other subject.

But it's a good demonstration of the capabilities available in modern browsers :)

Re: Show HN: Watermark.js – Functional ES6 lib for watermarking in the browser

#20

Post by artursapek » Thu, May 14, 2015, 3:57 PM UTC

nathankleyn wrote: post #15

scaturr wrote: post #13

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Well what if you batch it in the browser? It is quite possible to use file inputs to generate watermarked images without ever storing the image you are watermarking, and then upload the result.

Yep - that's totally possible. Actually, now you phrase it like that, I see what you mean about using it that way for a CMS, and it's an awesome idea.

You could also use the canvas element to display the image & watermark as a flat layer.