Reconize Press Kit: Watermark & Trace

The simple version

Reconize in ten seconds

You make something: a song, a script, a photo, a video.
Reconize puts your name on it.
Send it to anyone, and if a copy leaks, you can find out whose copy it was.

About Reconize

In one line

Reconize is a Mac app that protects creators' work before they send it: their name on every file, and a traceable mark on every copy.

Short description (about 45 words)

Reconize: Watermark & Trace is a Mac app that puts the creator's name on scripts, audio, photos and video, and gives every person they send work to their own copy with a hidden mark. If a copy leaks, Reconize shows whose copy it was. Verifying a file is free.

Long description (about 150 words)

Songwriters send demos to artists. Screenwriters send scripts to producers. Filmmakers send cuts to festivals. Photographers send proofs to clients. All of them hand over the work before it's public, and all of them lose track of it once it's out. Reconize: Watermark & Trace is a Mac app that fixes that. It signs each file with the creator's name using Content Credentials, the open standard behind the Content Authenticity Initiative, and adds a hidden mark in the picture or the sound. With Send & Track, every person gets their own copy that looks and sounds the same but carries a mark made just for them. If a copy turns up somewhere it shouldn't, the creator verifies it in Reconize and sees who they sent that copy to, and when. Anyone can verify a file free in a browser. Files are signed on the creator's own Mac, and Reconize never uploads them to its servers.

The problem, and our answer

Creators lose control the moment they hit send

Every day, creators hand unreleased work to people they trust. Once it leaves their hands, there has been no simple way to keep their name on it or to tell which copy got out. Reconize answers each part of that.

The problem

The leak

A filmmaker sends a rough cut to ten festival programmers. A week later it's on a pirate site. Which of the ten copies was it? Until now, there was no way to tell.

What Reconize does

Send & Track

Every person gets their own copy with its own hidden mark. If one turns up, Reconize shows whose copy it was and when it was sent.

“Every copy carries a name you can't see.”

The problem

The lost credit

A photo gets screenshotted and reposted a thousand times. Upload sites strip the file's details, so the photographer's name is gone after the first share.

What Reconize does

A hidden mark in the work itself

The mark lives in the picture and the sound, not in the file's details. In our tests it survived re-saving, resizing, screenshots and filters, so a stripped copy can still lead back to the creator.

“Even after a site strips your name, your work still leads back to you.”

The problem

The doubt

AI can fake almost anything, so people now doubt real work too. Creators have had no easy way to show they signed something, when, and that it hasn't changed.

What Reconize does

Sign with Content Credentials

Reconize signs the creator's name and the date into the file using Content Credentials, the industry standard. Anyone can verify a file free, and any change shows.

“A signature on your work that anyone can verify.”

Fact sheet

At a glance

ProductReconize: Watermark & Trace, a Mac app

CompanyLil Dog Productions, LLC

FounderRobert Angelo

Available sinceAugust 2026, Mac App Store. Current version 2.7.

PlatformsmacOS 14 or later. Checking works in any browser.

PriceFree: verify any file, 10 signs a month. Pro: $5.99/month or $49.99/year.

What it signsPhotos, video, audio and documents

StandardsContent Credentials (C2PA). Listed on the C2PA Conforming Products List as a conformant Generator Product. Content Authenticity Initiative member.

PrivacyFiles are signed on the Mac. Reconize never uploads them to its servers. Confirming a name uses an optional Apple or Google sign-in.

Press contacthello@reconize.me

Browser extensionFree for Chrome (Reconize: Check Content Credentials). Firefox and Safari to follow.

Free verify pageverify.reconize.me

Webreconize.me

Founder

Robert Angelo

Robert Angelo spent his career in digital media at NBC.com, rising from digital producer to director to VP of digital production. He was a producer on the Late Night with Jimmy Fallon Digital Experience, which won Emmys in 2009 and 2010. After years of watching creators' work spread online without their names on it, he built Reconize so creators can put their name on their work, send it out, and find out whose copy it was if it leaks.

Quotes

From the founder

“Every creator I know hands over work before they get paid. A beat goes to five artists, an audition goes to a casting office, a cut goes to a festival. Once it's out, you lose track of it. Reconize gives every one of those people their own copy, so if it turns up where it shouldn't, you can find out whose copy it was.”
Robert Angelo, founder of Reconize

“We're careful about what we claim. Reconize doesn't tell you whether something is real or made by AI. It tells you who signed a file, whether it changed, and on your own Mac, which copy a leak came from.”
Robert Angelo, founder of Reconize

“At NBC I watched great work travel the internet with nobody's name on it. The metadata gets stripped the moment you upload. So we put the mark in the picture and the sound itself, and we built it to run on your Mac, where your files already are.”
Robert Angelo, founder of Reconize

Story angles

Why it matters now

Unpaid work, in someone else's handsBeats, auditions, screeners and proofs all go out before anyone pays. Send & Track gives every recipient their own marked copy, so a leak points to whose copy it was.

Credit gets strippedPlatforms strip names and file info on upload. Reconize's hidden mark is built to survive that, so the creator's credit stays in the work itself.

Who signed it, and did it change?Anyone can verify a file free in a browser to see whose name is on it and whether it changed since. Reconize does not judge whether content is real or AI-made; it shows who stands behind it.

Private by designNo uploads. Files are marked on the creator's own Mac, and the list of who got which copy never leaves it.

Try it yourself

Verify a signed photo in your browser

These two photos were taken by Robert Angelo and signed with Reconize. Download one and verify it yourself. Nothing uploads: it all runs in your browser.

A Vespa scooter parked on a street, signed with Reconize

Signed photo: Vespa (JPEG, 2048 × 1536)Hidden mark: copy a76f245529b0

A church dome in Italy, signed with Reconize

Signed photo: Dome (JPEG, 2048 × 1536)Hidden mark: copy a7514ba87792

Drop the downloaded photo on verify.reconize.me. You will see Credentials valid, the creator's name, his linked accounts, and when it was signed.
Now take a screenshot of the photo, or post it somewhere and download it again. That strips the credentials, the way most apps and social sites do.
Drop that copy on the same page and click Look for a hidden mark. The credentials are gone, but the mark is still found, and it names the same copy.

Does the mark change the photo?

Signing keeps the photo's original color and changes the average pixel by less than 2 levels out of 255.

In our tests, the hidden mark survived

Re-saving as JPEG, down to quality 20
Resizing, down to 320 pixels wide
Converting to WebP or AVIF
Social-style re-compression, three times in a row
Screenshots of the photo
Color filters, brightness, contrast, black and white
Rotating, mirroring, slight tilts, blur, noise and sharpening

It did not survive

Crops that remove a quarter or more of the picture
Screenshots that show a lot of the page around the photo

In the same tests it never reported a mark on a photo that wasn't signed.

Tests run October 2026 on signed photos with 41 common edits each, using the same reading as verify.reconize.me. Results on heavily compressed originals are weaker.