Expert: LizaL - 10/26/2004

Question
There is an animated gif image I want to remove the watermark from (I'm using Photoshop/Imageready 7).
I was just wondering what the best way to go about it was.
I was thinking you could take the difference (somehow) of all the seperate frames and it would give you an image of the watermark then you could somehow subtract that image from the rest of the frames.

Please help, it is quite urgent.

Thanks, Malcolm.

Answer
Hi Malcolm,

To be perfectly honest, and from a technical standpoint, I'm not sure if there is a good way in which to remove a watermark from an animated GIF, outside of using the cloning tool/healing brush on each separate state of the image. That is, I don't think there's a calculated way in which to do it, as you suggest from your question. From everything I can think of, you would almost have to remove the watermark from one frame, and re-create the animation yourself.

But personally, I don't suggest doing this, anyway. Watermarks are put on images for a reason, and are usually very hard to remove for a reason. The creator obviously doesn't want someone to copy his or her work without permission.

Please forgive me if I sound biased. I do freelance work for two photographers who watermark all their work. They're both very concerned about people copying their photographs from their Web sites, and I can't say I blame them. They've used their years of education, knowledge and expertise to produce quality photos and I wouldn't give my work away to strangers, either.

So unless the original GIF is one you created, I personally wouldn't copy it, and I wouldn't take the watermark off either. Now if you created it, you could go back to your PSD file and remove it there -- that is, take it off the layer you originally put it on.

However -- if you'd like to re-create the image from scratch,  and if you have questions about doing that and want to post back, I'd be more than happy to walk you through it.

This probably wasn't what you wanted to hear, but I need to be honest with you!

Lisa