Google Creates Algorithm That Removes Watermarks From Stock Photos
Watermarks are used to mark and protect the copyright of millions of images on the web. They are extensively used by stock image services in their image previews and are usually added with low opacity so that the image content is still visible. Removing a watermark from a single image can be extremely challenging specially if the background is complex.
The Loophole
Watermarks are typically added in a consistent manner to many images. Stock content websites use the same watermark pattern on all their images. Researchers at Google have released a paper titled ‘On the Effectiveness of Visible Watermarks‘ that shows how this consistency can be exploited to estimate a watermark pattern from an image collection and remove it from any image.
The Algorithm
The Results
Know more in this video
00:03 – Intro
00:57 – How watermark consistency can be exploited
01:24 – Using the algorithm to estimate watermarks
01:50 – Before and after results (watermark removed)
02:44 – The solution to address this vulnerability
