Protecting your original photography online has become a necessary step. In theory, any photo you take is automatically protected by copyright. No one else should copy it without your prior authorization. In reality, it’s not the case. Photos are getting stolen and misused each day. According to a report by Copytrack, more than 2.5 billion images are stolen each day. The license violations amount to €532.5 billion (more than $568 billion) in damages.
It’s understandable why, as a professional photographer, you need to protect your images. One of the commonly-used methods to safeguard your digital photos is to watermark them. A visible watermark on the picture identifies you as the copyright holder. Nobody can use, modify or distribute the picture without your approval. Of course, a watermark is not bulletproof. Today, with the technological advancements, it can be removed with the right photo manipulation software. But it will most surely make the thieves’ mission more difficult and possibly discourage them from going further. After all, if they choose to remove the watermark, they’ll be committing copyright infringement.
When we talk about watermarking, we generally talk about a copyright text or a logo. But with a dedicated batch watermark software like our very own PhotoMarks you can also resort to other elements for image protection, such as EXIF info. PhotoMarks can read various tags from the metadata records, from the original date to the image dimensions and f-stop details, and directly imprint them on your photos. The process is super simple thanks to the step-based UI. All you have to do is add your photographs in Step 1, apply and customize the watermark in Step 2 and select your output folder and image format in Step 3.
Here’s how easy it is to add EXIF data to your photos:
Step 1
In the first step you add your photos. You can drag & drop them, click on Add Photos to select the files you wish to load or click on the Add button to load a folder with or without subfolders.
Step 2
In the second step (Edit Photos) you can take advantage of the built-in filters to easily edit your pics, in our particular case to add metadata to photos. To accomplish this task simply go to Add Filter > Marks > Text.
In the new window click on the Add Keyword button and then choose the EXIF info you’d like to insert into your images. Depending on your needs and preferences, you can add the date the photos were taken, the image dimensions and resolution, the camera make and model, f-stop, exposure or focal length data, as well as GPS coordinates. There are numerous options to choose from.
Once you’ve chosen your text you can start customizing it as you please. You can place it wherever you want either freely with drag & drop or selecting one of the nine preset locations, freely resize it, rotate it, choose the font type and color, adjust the opacity in the alpha channel, draw a bounding box or apply effects like stroke and shadow. You can also use the tile mode in case you wish to cover the entire image with your watermark.
You can additionally apply a logo to your pictures, rotate, resize and crop them and decorate them with frames and borders.
Step 3
In the third step of the process, called Setup, you get to set your final parameters before processing the photos. Here you can select the output format, as well as the destination of the new images: you can export them to a local folder on your computer, share them via email or upload them to FTP. Once everything is properly set up, all that remains to be done is hit the Process button.
It’s worth mentioning that, besides the batch processing capabilities, PhotoMarks offers another feature to improve your workflow. The tool allows you to save your frequently-used edits as Profiles and easily load them in other projects.