My coworker stumbled across this website:
http://www.vespaedwardsville.com/esh...mit_n.more.htm

These guys are in Illinois and using my pictures that I shot last year to advertise our carbon on our website. I'm not terribly worked up about it because I know that once pics are out there on the internets, they're pretty much fair game to anyone that can right-click a mouse. Although, the owner of my shop just emailed them a scathing notice to take em down!

This should get interesting

how'd they find it?
And they're using the small pics only so you can't even appreciate your hard work ted...
and for what you're doing at work, I'd work up a frame w/shop logo type deal. Not a watermark, but at least something in the corner they can't crop out w/o cropping out a portion of the part....

$.02
imitation something flattery something
Ben

Yeah, I don't want to do watermarks because I think they would detract from the image too much. I like the idea of incorporating the shop logo. I wonder how long it would take to download the thousands of product photos, run a batch action on them and re-upload ?

I'm loving that my coworkers are all worked up about it. Let's me know I'm in with the right bunch of guys. The funny thing to me is those were taken last year, long before I really had a firm grasp on what I was doing. I should go back and reshoot all those products just to show em up (and protect the new ones with a logo, of course).

Originally Posted by jacobsen1

how'd they find it?

Ben

Oops, missed that question. We regularly scour competitors' websites to make sure our products are ideally priced.

The funny thing is, is I don't think that shop knows who they're up against. With one post by me on our forum of 22,000+ Aprilia owners, I could all but guarantee that that shop never sells another Aprilia part

Do they buy the same product from the same company then?

but yeah, figure out a way to incorporate the logo as it will look more professional anyway, then save all the images to a folder and run a batch on them. The batch will be super easy/fast. ULing and DLing the pics (even with FTP) will take longer.

Those are all OEM parts directly from Aprilia. So yes.

I'll have to look into the logo thing after my much deserved vacation next week. Shouldn't be too hard to do.

What if you just placed a sticker or something with your shop's logo into the product picture? Like, next to the part or something... you know, next time you shoot.

That's a great idea. We've got great logo decals that I could just stick on my infiniti board. It would be our own custom backdrop. Of course other shops could just clone stamp them out if they know and have access to PS (slim chance), but at least it saves me a step in PP.

*cough* you're not using an action for resizing anyway? *cough*

Oh believe me, I love me some actions. I just *cough* updated to CS3 and need to get them all setup again.

:SNEEZE:

Mwuhahahahaha! :P

http://www.vespaedwardsville.com/esh...mit_n.more.htm


I win.

wait, so did you delete them, or move yours? IE were they hotlinking?

Or did they just take theirs down and don't have anything there now?

Either way, good work!

They took theirs down. When they were up they had changed the file names and were hosting them on their own site. Mine are still up on our site and I've started including a logo in everything I'm shooting now.

It's so satisfying seeing the "image not available" on their site

Maybe you should offer them your services...




...then send them the pictures they already stole.

That would be completely awesome! They're going to have a real hard time selling anything without pics.




I actually think I might email them tomorrow and offer them usage rights for, I dunno, $100 a pic for unlimited use?

Grrrrrrr :angry:

http://cgi.ebay.com/ebaymotors/ws/eB...DME:B:EF:US:11



I just sent a scathing email to these wankers.


Now I get to spend my afternoon downloading the bulk of 2000 product images and watermarking them all. Lazy ****ers capitalizing on my work!

so are all the shots w/o a white background yours?

Isn't that fraud when dealing with an auction since it's supposed to be a shot of THE item for sale? I'd also email Ebay and let them know. Maybe they will ban them.

Good idea. I'll wait to see how they respond to me before I get all gangsta' on them.

Man that sucks, but on a bright note Nice Pics.
Have keep tabs on the other company to make sure they didn't go back to using you pics?


Scott

I win. They sent me an email this morning and have already taken the pics down.

I wonder how long it will take PS to run a batch action on some 5000 pics?

not that long...

well, let's just say less time than you've spent tracking down these people who are already borrowing them...

Originally Posted by tardypizza

I win. They sent me an email this morning and have already taken the pics down.

I wonder how long it will take PS to run a batch action on some 5000 pics?

Not sure, but for simple, fast watermarking (and lots of EXIF management), I use exifer.

It took a little over an hour to watermark them all. Now tomorrow, I get to see how long it takes to upload them back.

I might look into exifer sometime, thanks for the heads up.

Are they at least the same file names so it'll be an easy swap?

Originally Posted by jacobsen1

Are they at least the same file names so it'll be an easy swap?

Oh yeah, I just downloaded everything from the server (took a while), watermarked them, saved with the same file name, so now to upload all I have to do is wait while everything is overwritten.

I'm so retarded. I just checked my watermark handywork and I misspelled our damn company name!!

Startover from scratch...

that sounds like something I would do...

Things I don't like:
excel not having a live spell check (like red underlined words)
photoshop not have a spell check at all...

le sigh

^ another one Ted?

Yeah, and this is after I watermarked everything. Looks like he grabbed it before that, or maybe google still has a cached copy somewhere. I have 2 email out to veys powersports, this is getting old.

How'd you find this one?

and is it down now, I just see one very small image?

One of our customers emailed me. And if it's just down to the small one then that's the only one that isn't watermarked. Sneaky bastages.

Yep, just one that's ~200 x ~100

So my buddy had a great idea. If they don't take the pic down I'm going to create a fake ebay account and start the bidding real high.

I win

Now he's just stealing the stock photo from aprilia.com. Shmuck. And, I really wanted to wreck his action, too.

action?

auction


My 'u' key was MIA for a split second. Those responsible have been sacked.

Again! Lazy bastards.

http://www.xtremepowersportsusa.com/...rbon_Fiber.htm

look familiar?
http://www.af1racing.com/store/Scrip...idproduct=6137







and
http://www.xtremepowersportsusa.com/...DLEBAR_PAD.htm


mine:
http://www.af1racing.com/store/Scrip...idproduct=4045







http://www.xtremepowersportsusa.com/...AND_GUARDS.htm

mine:
http://www.af1racing.com/store/Scrip...idproduct=4018


and about 1/2 dozen others I don't feel like linking to.


Anyone know of a serverside script that can be run to watermark all 6000 images I have online? I did it once before manually, downloaded every image, ran a batch action in photoshop, then re-uploaded, but I don't want to do that again because it's a giant pain in the ass AND only about 1000 images need to be watermarked this time.

they're not hotlinking to yours are they?

^

Originally Posted by jacobsen1

they're not hotlinking to yours are they?

Unfortunately no.

Re-upload a file of the same pic, but name it differently. Use that on your page. Then upload another pic and name it the same as the one they are stealing. Make it a dildo or something. Then people will see a dildo when going to their page for that exhaust.

Originally Posted by Mr.Boobie

How does one block right clicking? I know I have gone to a few site's where it doesn't allow right clicking on any images?

Originally Posted by freq

You can use annoying javascripts to discourage right-clicking, but its retarded and easily circumvented.

^What he said, that and it would make a lot of other features on our website screech to a halt. You can't stop anyone from printscreening either.

Originally Posted by freq

imagemagick

http://www.imagemagick.org/script/index.php

its a server side program you can use to resize or otherwise manipulate images. I have a plugin on my company website setup to resize my uploaded images in 3 sizes, and add a watermark to the largest size when i upload a new product (i didn't program the thing, i'm not that smart, but i did configure it to use a png file of my watermark it would then merge with my files on upload.)

to do your whole site, you'd probably have to setup some kind of custom script to feed the converted files into a new directory using identical filenames, check them, and then copy them to the old directory.

Thanks! I'll check it out.

Originally Posted by thomps6s

Re-upload a file of the same pic, but name it differently. Use that on your page. Then upload another pic and name it the same as the one they are stealing. Make it a dildo or something. Then people will see a dildo when going to their page for that exhaust.

Great idear but they're not hotlinking, they renamed the images and are hosting them elsewhere.

Originally Posted by Mr.Boobie

How does one block right clicking? I know I have gone to a few site's where it doesn't allow right clicking on any images?

well, even if you do that, there's ALWAYS print screen.... That's why I don't bother with anything other than something that will lead people to my site... (not that anyone is stealing my crap).

Originally Posted by thomps6s

Re-upload a file of the same pic, but name it differently. Use that on your page. Then upload another pic and name it the same as the one they are stealing. Make it a dildo or something. Then people will see a dildo when going to their page for that exhaust.

we already covered that:

Originally Posted by jacobsen1

they're not hotlinking to yours are they?

Originally Posted by tardypizza

Unfortunately no.

hey ted, going forward, do you have any sort of AF1 towels or anything? I'm just thinking you should use some sort of backdrop that has your logo on it. I know how hard you've worked to get some rad shots, but yeah, busy them up with your artwork using the camera (stickers on the background even).

Originally Posted by QJ

I know this post is old....but how do you misspell AF1?

The silent 3 always gets me.

Originally Posted by jacobsen1

hey ted, going forward, do you have any sort of AF1 towels or anything? I'm just thinking you should use some sort of backdrop that has your logo on it. I know how hard you've worked to get some rad shots, but yeah, busy them up with your artwork using the camera (stickers on the background even).

I did that for a while, then I just stopped because it was annoying me and one clone stamp could take care of a sticker.

I need to do something similar to this again: