Remove watermark

[denzjos]

@Pixlab, nice work. I hadn't thought of using this resynth plugin. The 'S' on your picture is still visible as a little ghost letter. Optimise with clone tool and healing tool is needed. It's still a tough and time consuming job to remove a watermark, but it protects the author.

[PixLab]

(07-11-2021, 05:39 PM)denzjos Wrote: @Pixlab, nice work. I hadn't thought of using this resynth plugin. The 'S' on your picture is still visible as a little ghost letter. Optimize with clone tool and healing tool is needed. It's still a tough and time consuming job to remove a watermark, but it protects the author.

Thanks,
Yes time consuming, not worth at all.

Ah... um... how to tell, 2 days ago (it was 2 o'clock in the morning...) I've "hacked" the way to do it properly(with background behind watermark) and it works for all major stock photos and can be used in batch process  
It's way more simple than all we have done, a bit of work in the beginning, though, but once it's done, we can use to batch process...

We were all on the wrong path  
They use a template (or alike), thus we need to find out how to reproduce that template.

All watermark are a shade of gray, most of them have 2 shades of gray like shutterstock, 123RF, iStock, and so.
What we need to do is to take their logo, which is in plain sight on their website, and find out what's those grays are made of.

Search "black background" on their website
like there > https://www.123rf.com/photo_110670961_ba...riday.html , Pick the color of their logo (this is the "inside" color of the logo)
or there > https://www.shutterstock.com/image-photo...1914276916 , Pick the color of the logo (this will be the "outer edge")

Then search for "White background"
like here > https://www.123rf.com/photo_132013733_at...tilt-.html , Pick the color of the logo (this will be the outer edge)
or there > https://www.shutterstock.com/image-photo...1647167320 , Pick the color of the logo (this will be the inner color)

Then...
Make their logo with the 2 picked grays (take the logo from their website or search for a big one on Google > https://www.google.com/search?q=istockph...58&bih=758 ),
To know the size/ratio of the outer edge, take a watermarked picture (black or white) and make the logo on a layer above, or a more precise way is to count the number of pixels on the pics from their website (the links above).
once it's done, put it on a layer on top of the image you want to remove the watermark, scale it, search the appropriate blending mode, adjust the opacity,  => done! (some logo might need to be inverted before blending)
And you keep the background behind the watermark

once you know opacity/blend mode / percentage the logo takes on the picture and its place and/or the sequence of the pattern alike, batch process is possible

Note: For shutterstock, on the BIGGER image (when you click on the image on their website, see links above) they add some kind of displacement map, or something else, add things to their logo and add the owner name, making it way more difficult to have a watermark template.

In all case it was a fun exercise but I'm not anymore interested (not worth at all and you will always find a free to use picture similar to the paid one, if you don't want to buy it).