I just put a new set up on Flickr today and it's drawing some criticism regarding watermarking of images.
I was going to start watermarking all my images from now to deter people from 'borrowing' my work - as I'm also in the process of setting up a more professional photography 'site.
Now, of the images I just posted, I was considering reducing the opacity, but some people have stated that it ruins the images.

What's the forum views on this issue : to watermark or not?

Mark

Watermark if you want to. If it's important to you, do it.

My only comment on your mark, Mark , is it comes over very large in the centre of the thumbnails on Flickr.

Discussions on other channels tend towards the support of watermarks/copyright info but shy away from placement in the centre. Size is another issue but IMHO, if you reduce the opacity of the watermark but still make it obvious then you've covered both arguements.

I've had a few of my images 'borrowed' which is why I try an keep the resolution as low as possible and the size to 800px wide. With 'save for web' buttons available in most drawing packages these days there's really no need for huge file sizes.

My view - watermark and be dammed. After all, it would be nice to sell a few pics and not have them stolen.

Al

I'm anti-watermarking.
I don't, and I don't think I ever will.
The stuff that's on Flickr is all much lower res than the originals, 72dpi stuff that won't reproduce well. I'm usually doing 1024 pixels on the short side as well, but again, that might change.
You can play with the prefs to make photos only viewable not downloadable for all except your contacts, then nobody can steal the full-size pictures from your photostream.

One of my fav. artists has a vast catalogue of photography on Flickr, and has had some things lifted and claimed by someone else.
Now, that prompted a rather petulant outburst and a withdrawal of some of the material. However, he's still not watermarking his work, and I think there's been a revision in his contact policies.

If you really feel you must mark the pics, then please make it as transparent and out of the way as possible.

I lean completely in the opposite direction. All my images are Creative Commons licensed to be used by anyone, just as long as they attribute them to me. Lets be honest, if I stuck © and watermarks on them, they’d just use someone else’s.

I can understand pro photographers taking care to protect what is, after all, their livelihood, but for anyone else it just strikes me as a bit unnecessary.

As Alex (ProfessorF) said, if you upload at a max of 1024 then your images are next to useless for print. Yes people might steal them to use on a website, but does it really matter? Yes it’s rude if they don’t ask first, but you’ve not lost anything.

I'd say it's more than rude, they're nicking stuff. I agree, most people are pig ignorant when it comes to copyright - I've been told point-blank by one editor "if it's on the internet it's not covered by copyright" - but ignorance is no excuse. My policy is to watermark, but more as a bit of extra advertising rather than a huge deterrent. After all, I want people to see my pics and enjoy them, otherwise I wouldn't put them on Flickr. However, I don't put my absolute favourite shots up there, you have to keep some mystery.

I've replaced the Money set with non-watermarked images.
I've decided that I'm going to reposition it and alter it's opacity, once I've done this I'll start using it again.

Mark

I use a combination of Digimarc (which embeds a watermark that can't be seen and it remains there even if the picture is altered/cropped) and a small block of text in one corner with details of who/what/where and a note that it contains a watermark.