01
An invisible mark
The photo looks the same. The mark adapts to each image, so it stays out of sight on smooth areas like sky and skin.
Know where your photos go, and who let them out.
Every image you share carries a mark, woven into its pixels, behind what the eye can see. Not metadata. Not a logo in the corner. When a copy turns up where it shouldn’t, a scan names whose copy it was, even from a screenshot. For photographers and creators, and for every company whose images leave the building.
Every square a pixel. A few of them carry a name.Photo: Joshua Hanson, Unsplash
Screenshots●Reposts●Crops●Filters●Thumbnails●Compression●Photos of screens●AI edits●Screenshots●Reposts●Crops●Filters●Thumbnails●Compression●Photos of screens●AI edits●
The principle
The photo looks the same. No two copies are.
Each person you send a photo to gets their own copy. To the eye they’re identical. To a scan, each one names who it was issued to.
Scanning…
Scan resultMark read
Copy 03
Issued to[Client]Found asCropped screenshot
What you get
Four things working together, from the moment you upload to the moment you scan.
02
Copy 01 → AgencyCopy 02 → EditorCopy 03 → Client
A copy for every recipient
Each person gets their own version. If one leaks, the scan names the copy it came from.
03
ScreenshotsRepostsCropsCompressionPhotos of screens
Read from a screenshot
A cropped screenshot or a phone photo of a screen is often all you find. The scan reads the mark from that too.
04
Owner[Your studio]
Copy03 · [Client]
ReportPDF
A result you can show
Every scan gives you a plain record: whose image it is, whose copy it was, when it was issued and where it surfaced. Written to be put in front of a client, a partner, a lawyer or a court.
Why most marks fail
A logo in the corner is not protection.
Most of what the market calls a watermark is one of three things, and each of them is gone in minutes with tools anyone has. That is not a weakness of the people using them; it is how those marks are built.
Visible watermarks
A logo or text over the image. Cropped out, or removed with a generative fill in seconds. And the image is spoiled for everyone, including the client it was meant for.
Metadata and signatures
EXIF, IPTC, XMP, C2PA. Stripped by every screenshot, every upload to a social network, every re-save. A signature proves a file is intact; it says nothing once the file has been copied.
Classic “robust” invisible marks
A single pattern hidden in the image’s frequencies. Breaks under rotation, crop and rescale, and under the screenshot-of-a-screenshot chain; filters, re-encoding and AI tools that re-render texture finish the job. Often faintly visible on sky and skin.
What dipmark does differently
No mark survives everything. The difference is what happens at the end of a real chain: screenshot, repost, phone photo, crop, filter, a partial AI edit. dipmark is built and tested for exactly that chain.
- Several independent layers in the image itself, from fine detail to the composition: a tool that defeats one leaves the others.
- Read against your registered original, which recovers the mark from crops, rotation, mirroring, colour inversion, thumbnails and phone photos of screens.
- A different copy for every recipient, so a scan names who let it out, not just that it is yours.
- Honest results: when a copy is damaged beyond reading, dipmark says so, and still tells you the image is yours.
Once marked, marked everywhere
Mark it once. It stays marked wherever it goes.
The mark is not attached to the file, a link or an account. It is part of the picture itself. Every copy anyone makes of your image carries it along, because copying the image means copying the pixels. The copy carries it without any server running. Nothing expires.
- Downloaded
- Reposted
- Sent on WhatsApp
- Screenshotted
- Screenshotted again
- Photographed off a screen
- Cropped
- Rotated or mirrored
- Filtered
- Shrunk to a thumbnail
- Partly edited with AIStill yours.
No expiry
The mark in a copy does not fade or run out. There is nothing to renew and nothing in the file that can be switched off.
Nothing to strip
There is no metadata to delete and no logo to crop. The mark is where the picture is: in every pixel that is left.
From the moment you mark it
Copies that left before you marked the image carry nothing, so mark before the first send. Every copy after that is covered.
The one thing that does not carry the mark is a new image: a scene redrawn from scratch rather than copied. Even then, dipmark still recognises that it was made from yours, and says so.
Built for the real world
Film a screen that shows a screen that shows your photo. Still yours.
Stolen photos get screenshotted, reposted and re-shot off a monitor. dipmark is built to read the mark at the end of that chain.
Scanned. Mark read.
Copy 03 · issued to [Client]. Three generations later, the copy still names its source.
- 01
Shown on a monitor
- 02
Filmed with a phone
- 03
Filmed again from that phone
Stress test
What we threw at it.
The edits photos really go through, and what a scan returned afterwards in our tests. Of these, only a full AI redraw lost the mark.
ReadRecognisedLost
ScreenshotRead
Repost on social mediaRead
CropRead
Filters and colour gradingRead
Thumbnail sizeRecognised
Heavy compressionRead
Photo of a screenRead
Partial AI editRecognised
Full AI redrawLost
Three honest outcomes when you scan.
Mark read
The copy is identified: whose photo it is, and who it was issued to.
Photo recognised
It’s your photo, but the mark is too damaged to say whose copy it was.
Not found
No mark and no match. We say so plainly, rather than guess.
dipmark lab
Open the labDon’t take our word for it. See it work.
In the lab you go through the real thing: we mark a copy with your name, you take it anywhere, and the scan reads your name back out of the pixels. Try it, try to break it, and decide for yourself.
How it works
Request accessMark. Send. Scan.
- 1
Mark
Upload your photos. dipmark adds a mark that belongs to you and leaves the image as you made it.
- 2
Send
Name the people you deliver to. Each one gets their own marked copy.
- 3
Scan
Found your photo where it shouldn’t be? Scan the copy you found. dipmark tells you whose photo it is and which copy it was.
Cropped screenshot- Scan result
- Sample
- Mark found
- Yes
- Owner
- [Your studio]
- Copy
- 03 · [Client]
- Original
- [Photo], sent [DD.MM.YYYY]
Tracking
After the scan, the whole story.
A scan doesn’t just say yes or no. It shows you what was found and leaves the next move to you.
- 01
Whose copy
The recipient the leaked copy was issued to.
- 02
Where it surfaced
The link or place you found it, kept with the scan.
- 03
What was found
Mark read, photo recognised, or nothing, stated plainly.
- 04
Who is looking
Who in your team ran which scan, and when.
- 05
The report
A clean summary of the finding you can hand on.
- 06
Your call
You decide what happens next. dipmark never acts for you.
Evidence
Proof that stands without us.
When it matters, nobody has to take our word for it. Three independent witnesses, each one checkable with open, standard tools.
The mark in the copy
Read from the pixels of the copy that was found: which photo, and whose copy. Every finding says plainly what was read, and when a reading is less certain than usual.
Always on
An independent timestamp
Every registration is sealed within the hour by an independent timestamp authority, under the RFC 3161 standard. The seal proves when your photo was registered.
Optional
Anchored in Bitcoin
Switch it on and every registration is also recorded in the public Bitcoin blockchain. The proof outlives any company, dipmark included. No cryptocurrency or wallet involved.
For the timestamp and the Bitcoin anchor, only a fingerprint of each registration leaves dipmark, never your photos or your name. The proofs come as a download, ready for an expert, with the steps to check them.
Beyond photography
Every image you hand to someone else is a copy you can trace back.
Leaks rarely come from attacks. They come from the fourth person on a distribution list, a screenshot in a chat, a preview forwarded with good intentions. dipmark turns every shared image into an accountable copy: issued to a name, readable wherever it surfaces, documented when it matters.
01
Attribution, not suspicion
When something leaks, you do not have to accuse a circle of people. The copy itself names the recipient it was issued to.
02
Deterrence that costs nothing
Recipients who know each copy is theirs treat it differently. The mark works before anything leaks.
03
Evidence, not a hunch
Each scan is logged with the file, its fingerprint, the original and the time. One click turns it into a report written for a lawyer or a court.
04
Built for the real chain
Screenshots, reposts, phone photos of screens, crops, filters, partial AI edits. The mark is read at the end of that chain, not from the original file.
05
Nothing leaves your control
Recipients receive ordinary files. Nothing is sent to anyone, and no action is taken, without you.
06
One system, every kind of image
Photographs, documents, renders, drawings, screenshots of designs. If it is an image file, it can be marked and traced.
For anyone whose images carry value, or risk.
Photographers and creators protect their work. Companies protect what they share before it is public: products, designs, documents, campaigns.
01
Photographers and creators
Know which client, editor, lab or follower a leaked image came from, and prove the repost is yours.
02
Studios and agencies
Every delivery from the team marked under one owner; every recipient their own copy. One leak, one name.
03
Brands and product teams
Launch imagery, packaging, renders and campaign material shared under embargo with partners, retailers and press.
04
Media and publishers
Trace a copy back to the licence it was sent under, and to the outlet that broke the terms.
05
Legal, insurance and compliance
Confidential documents and evidence photos shared with a defined circle, with an audit trail built to be examined.
06
Architecture, real estate, manufacturing
Plans, listings, prototypes and technical drawings that must reach three people and stay with those three.
In practice
Three ways a leak usually goes.
The preview that went public
Previews sent to the couple and two vendors. One shows up online early. The scan names the copy.
The account that “found” it
Your photo, cropped and filtered, on someone else’s feed. The scan shows it’s yours.
The concept a competitor saw
A pitch went to three people. A rival had it a week later. Now you know which one.
FAQ
Straight answers.
Not to the eye. The mark adapts to each image and stays out of sight on smooth areas like sky and skin.
dipmark is open by invitation while we test it.
We’re working with a small group of photographers, studios, agencies and companies that share sensitive images. Tell us what you share, and we will open an account for you.
