If you work with digital images and constantly share them online, you probably know by now that image theft is a real and rising phenomenon. Whether you’re a professional or amateur photographer, real estate agent, blogger or just running an online business, it’s important to try to protect your photos from illegal use. After all, this is your hard work and no one should get the credit for it.
There are several ways to protect your photos. You can register a copyright with your local authorities, place a copyright notice on your website, disable right-click, embed personal information in the EXIF metadata and, of course, add a watermark to your images – the subject of today’s article. By adding a text or logo to your pictures you basically remove any uncertainties. This is a clear statement that you own exclusive rights to use, distribute or edit those pictures.
The most common location of the chosen watermark is in one of the bottom corners of the image, whether left or right. This subtle placement is ideal because it doesn’t detract from the photo itself. This way people can still maintain the focus on the image. The problem with this bottom corner positioning is that it doesn’t provide the highest level of protection. Experienced, tech-savvy users will find a way to crop it out or erase it from the picture.
If your aim is to ensure the best possible protection of your images, it’s advisable to resort to a tiled watermark. This will allow you to fill the entire picture with your chosen watermark and make its removal almost impossible.
Add a Repeating Watermark in 3 Easy Steps
If you want to repeat the watermark across the image, you can use various tools to accomplish this task. You can opt for a general image editor, such as Photoshop for example. Such a program can indeed help you achieve the desired outcome, but the process isn’t the most straightforward. Not to mention the costs, as this type of editors don’t come cheap.
At the same time you can resort to a lightweight tool, specially developed to batch watermark images, like our very own PhotoMarks. PhotoMarks gives you the opportunity to add both text and logo marks to your pictures and to fully customize them, to match your personal standards and preferences. In addition to that, the app is super easy to use thanks to its three-step process design. Here’s how simple it is to add a repeating watermark to your photos:
Step 1
In the first step just add the images you want to watermark. You can click on the Add Photos button, use drag & drop, add an entire folder with or without subfolders.
Step 2
In the second step of the process you insert the desired type of watermark, whether it’s a simple text, copyright notice or logo. Simply click on Add Filter > Marks > Text/Logo. Next, since you want the watermark to cover the photo, make sure to tick the Tile checkbox. Afterwards you can start the customizing process.
For instance, if you’re using a text mark, PhotoMarks lets you choose the preferred font style, size and color, to change the horizontal (Offset X) and vertical distance (Offset Y) between tiles, to rotate the text to a certain angle, to modify the distance between text lines, to adjust the transparency or the text’s blur intensity.
To make the photo itself still visible, it’s best to set a certain distance between the tiles and to rotate the watermark instead of maintaining straight. Also make sure to set a medium to high level of opacity for better results.
Besides watermarking photos, PhotoMarks places at your disposal other useful features. You can convert (includes support for RAW files), resize, crop or rotate images, as well as decorate them with various frames and borders.
Step 3
The third and final step is where you set your configuration. You can select the destination of the newly-watermarked photos (a local folder, send them via email, upload them to FTP or Flickr). You can also choose to keep the original image format or convert to a commonly-used one.
PhotoMarks places great importance on efficiency and helping users improve their workflow. That’s why the app enables you to save your frequently-used operations as Profiles and then easily load them in other projects.
In case you’re looking for a mobile solution, the app also allows you to watermark photos on iPhone and iPad.
