Hi!

While working today, I wanted to try out a composition image from Fotolia for one of my print design. Instead of doing a screen grab or right click, I used the <<Download a Comp image>> link.

To my surprise, Fotolia gives you the image without any watermark, which for web use is as easy as giving the image for free. A 512 x 481 image, good for a hell of a lot of uses on the web, usually used smaller than that so the image gains quality...

I don't know what you think, but to me at least they should make stealing the image a bit harder by keeping the watermark on like every other stock site?.

Not sure that I like seeing a 500x400 image free to use out there (yes you can say that they did not buy it thus cannot use it since they don't have the license but... Prove it if you can't find any alteration on the image due to cloning out the watermark..!)

Example: http://www.fotolia.com/Content/Comp/35425834

Your thoughts?

I see comp images with the old Fotolia watermark displayed in a heavy compressed version with bad, bad artifacts.

The potential buyer might as well take a screenshot of the actual preview image to get a better comp.

I don't see a problem regarding the watermark...

I almost thought I was technically alienated by reading your remark but... after some checks:
Use FIREFOX. Just left an email to fotolia about this.

Check this out:

This is funny. They have script for it that DON'T work in all browsers... Eh. So in firefox then, it's a free steal (btw I just bought the image for 8 credits but...)

 just tested in Internet Explorer and yes the images is degraded very much and looks like craps.

I just saw it does the same with direct link too: http://download.fotolia.com/Content/CompImage/FotoliaComp_35425834_vPlCMVnDIaF2EJtgrwlhbCwPwvhF5uOr

So on Firefox version, degradation is not so bad, and grandma or Mr. Blog don't see artifacts and heavy compression.

Firefox 8.0, Chrome 16.0, IE7 - all display the image WITH watermark.

Firefox 8.0, Chrome 16.0, IE7 - all display the image WITH watermark.

Lol... I recently update a bunch of add-ons and uninstall some stuff from firefox... Just check my Firefox version and it tells me version 3.6... I'll update back to 8, that might be the ''issue'' since new scripts definetly would not work on an old browser like this.

Don't know how this happened, must have uninstalled the firefox updates. At least it's a good thing to know that we can't easily steal of the work on Fotolia. (On other website I didn't have any issues as I think the comp are created as a separate JPG instead of being generated ''on-the-fly'' as in Fotolia)

I like threads like this. They make me feel extra good about having pulled my portfolio and having nothing more to do with Fotolia. 

Quote from: BaldricksTrousers on December 19, 2011, 15:08

I like threads like this. They make me feel extra good about having pulled my portfolio and having nothing more to do with Fotolia. 

Definitely understand your point of view... Having a few cents for an image is ok but... Having them ''free'' for a decent web size, not sure I like it, definitely start to feel uneasy towards that...

Did you report this to Fotolia?

Firefox 8.0, Chrome 16.0, IE7 - all display the image WITH watermark.

On 3 machines I have various versions of Firefox 8.0, 7.0 and 4.0. All show crappy pic + old watermark.