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MS Paint and Photos inivisibly watermark even locally generated output with GUID

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Re: MS Paint and Photos inivisibly watermark even locally generated output with GUID

#221

Post by pxoe »

razster wrote: post #213
pxoe wrote: post #200

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Background removal is really useful though, saves a bunch of time. Unfortunately, some of the regular paint tools like eraser don't erase in a smooth antialiased way and just end up looking jagged (also only a square shape for eraser...no eraser brush mode unfortunately), so it ends up being a better looking option (well, when it works properly, which it does often enough to be useful). For whatever reason a bunch of…

I've been using ComfyUI to do fine background and watermark removal. Might take a look into that as an alternative. Run Flux.2 Klein or Comfyui's own workflow.

Key point, saves a bunch of time. Copy, paste, click button, done in three seconds. The app is also just there, preinstalled. It's great precisely because it doesn't require "looking into" anything. Yes, there's a bunch of other apps and services, but that's all besides that point. It also works pretty much on any pc made in past decade and half without crazy gpu/vram requirements for a relatively miniscule task.

Re: MS Paint and Photos inivisibly watermark even locally generated output with GUID

#222

Post by pbhjpbhj »

parl_match wrote: post #217
qu4z-2 wrote: post #193

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I don't so much mind about Paint, but modern Notepad is completely unusable. We had "Notepad but with Rich Text formatting" -- it was called WordPad and no-one used it so they eventually deleted it.

> it was called WordPad and no-one used it so they eventually deleted it. about a third of windows users used wordpad. that's not a small amount the issue, as i see it, is that they took two tools with two different user communities and slammed them together

>about a third of windows users used wordpad.

What's your source? I'm curious about use rates of other tools, I didn't know MS published that info.

Re: MS Paint and Photos inivisibly watermark even locally generated output with GUID

#223

Post by [deleted] »

brian-armstrong wrote: post #210
qu4z-2 wrote: post #193

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I don't so much mind about Paint, but modern Notepad is completely unusable. We had "Notepad but with Rich Text formatting" -- it was called WordPad and no-one used it so they eventually deleted it.

The people who still use Windows yet complain about this are quite confusing to me. There's been every indication that it will keep going like this for years now, and the cost of switching is just not that high. If you're still riding that train it's time to just embrace it.

[deleted]

Re: MS Paint and Photos inivisibly watermark even locally generated output with GUID

#224

Post by pxoe »

drdexebtjl wrote: post #203
pxoe wrote: post #197

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I wanted dark mode, tabs, and autosave, and now I don't have to use a different app to get those, so that works out great for me. Not sure what "breaking changes" even means for that though. Did it suddenly stop being able to open text files? No, it still just works.

IIRC they did make a breaking change by changing the default character encoding to UTF-8 without BOM. They also started rendering and preserving Unix-style line endings (LF). Very welcome breaking changes :)

That's a really fair point, but i'm not sure if that's what they meant by "breaking changes" if that was followed with "autocorrect, rich text, and Copilot"

Re: MS Paint and Photos inivisibly watermark even locally generated output with GUID

#225

Post by kbelder »

jkaplowitz wrote: post #150
jijji wrote: post #90

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The article says that once converted to BMP all the metadata gets removed....so on linux: convert file.jpg file.bmp; convert file.bmp file.jpg

It says that about the C2PA content credentials metadata, but not about the modified image pixels.

Conversion from jpg to bmp to jpg is a lossy process, so it may obscure the watermarked pixels.

Re: MS Paint and Photos inivisibly watermark even locally generated output with GUID

#226

Post by cj »

pxoe wrote: post #218
cj wrote: post #212

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Pixelation was a feature back in the 90’s and 2000’s. But yea, I guess it’s a bug in 2026.

It's been a "bug" for several decades now. Not everything was of shitty jagged quality in either 90s or 00s. Particularly when using some more capable image editors.

If you’re actually intended to Paint in MS Paint, as in create things from scratch, you need to limit the upper end of quality for it to be usable.

Otherwise you might as well use photoshop.

(But no I’m not kidding myself, I realize the days of using Paint to actually Paint are over)

Re: MS Paint and Photos inivisibly watermark even locally generated output with GUID

#227

Post by tgsovlerkhgsel »

> In other words, “generated locally” does not mean that the complete operation is local.

That sounds like a privacy violation that the DPAs should look into.

Edit: Apparently it's disclosed somewhere. Still, that defeats the entire point of local generation...

Re: MS Paint and Photos inivisibly watermark even locally generated output with GUID

#228

Post by pbhjpbhj »

weberer wrote: post #24

The AI aspect of this is a red herring. The real problem is that they're secretly adding in a unique identifier into every image you create. If somebody does not like your meme, they can just send a copyright subpoena to Microsoft to instantly get your full name, address, email, phone number, and any other data associated with your Microsoft account. Just like age verification, this is another weapon in the war again…

That was largely my read of the situation too - it would be a colossal GDPR breech against every EU user, surely? That's got to be a €Billion fine??

Presumably USA are complicit in this spying on allied countries - did the countries know, is it a Five Eyes thing?

Re: MS Paint and Photos inivisibly watermark even locally generated output with GUID

#229

Post by silver_sun »

ixwt wrote: post #20
WalterGR wrote: post #12

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What would prevent someone from applying the same algorithm on a computer to sign arbitrary images?

Keys could be stored in something like TPM on Camera, and could sign the image. The key could then be verified from the camera itself to prove the authenticity of the image. If we as a society deemed it necessary, the camera manufacturer could also provide a list of keys for devices they have manufactured. And an image/key could be provided, and the manufacturer could verify the authenticity that way. The TPM signing…

Some problems with this particular system:

If the TPM signs the original image taken by the camera, then even the slightest image processing on another device would invalidate the signature. Routine changes like cropping, scaling, converting between image formats / quality levels, or applying image filters would invalidate the signature.

An adversary can manipulate the date/time settings on the camera and forge evidence to frame someone. "This cryptographically signed photo, with timestamp, proves that you were here at this time!"

And camera sensors can get damaged and need replacement. But if replacement of the TPM-and-sensor chip is allowed, then you can just as well replace it with a sensor from another camera. In which case a signature from a specific TPM+sensor doesn't prove that a specific camera took the photo, at best it might be evidence that a specific camera model took the photo.

If the manufacturer will happily ship a replacement TPM+sensor for a specific camera, someone can fraudulently claim that their sensor is broken and be given a new TPM+sensor for the same camera. And there will now be multiple TPM+sensors in existence that have the same key. Since this module can be switched between cameras, there could be multiple cameras that signed a given picture.

To ship (identical) replacement TPMs, the manufacturer would also need to know the private keys of all the cameras, so the manufacturer could forge arbitrary signatures at will.

Finally maybe the manufacturer doesn't want to deal with the above problems and decides that repairing the camera's TPM is not allowed after all, or that only the manufacturer is allowed to repair a camera, but then they may be in violation of right-to-repair laws in several jurisdictions.

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