Why watermark your photos
A watermark shows who made an image and makes it less attractive to reuse without permission. Photographers watermark previews sent to clients and images posted to portfolios; online sellers put their shop name on product photos so copies on other marketplaces still point back to them; and people sharing scans of IDs or documents add a line such as “Copy for rental application only” so the scan cannot easily be reused for another purpose.
A watermark is not a legal requirement for copyright – your photos are protected anyway – but it makes your authorship visible wherever the image ends up, and in some countries, including the United States, deliberately removing copyright information such as a watermark is itself unlawful.
Choosing the right style
A corner watermark at a modest size and opacity is the least distracting choice and suits portfolios and social media, where you want people to enjoy the picture and still see your name. Bottom right is the most common position because viewers’ eyes reach it last.
A centred watermark protects better, because removing it means retouching the middle of the image, but it is more intrusive. It works for proofs and previews that should not be usable as they are.
A repeating pattern covers the whole image with small, rotated copies. This is what stock photo agencies use for previews, and it is the strongest protection a visible watermark can offer.
For a logo, use a PNG with a transparent background so only the logo itself appears. A white or light logo with reduced opacity works on most photos; on images with a bright sky or a white background, a dark version is easier to see.
How it works
Each photo is decoded on your device in a background thread, turned upright using its rotation tag and drawn onto a canvas. The watermark is then drawn on top with your settings, scaled to the photo’s width, and the result is saved again in the chosen format. Because the size is relative, a batch of photos with different resolutions gets a consistent look.
To make sure the photos you publish don’t reveal where they were taken, use the EXIF remover on originals you share without a watermark. To reduce photos to web size first, use Resize Image.