Add a watermark to photos

What a watermark does, and does not do

A visible watermark tells everyone who sees the picture where it came from, and it makes using the photo without permission a little more trouble. It is not a lock. A small mark in a corner can be cropped off in seconds, and image editors with AI fill can paint over it. The harder a mark is to remove, the more it covers the picture, so every watermark is a trade between protection and how good the photo looks.

• A corner mark is enough to show authorship on portfolios, social posts and product photos, and spoils nothing.
• A mark across the subject, larger and in the middle, makes cropping useless.
• A repeated pattern over the whole picture is the hardest to remove and is what stock photo previews use. Keep it faint.

Size and position that work on every photo

The size is a percentage of each photo's width, not a number of pixels. A mark set to 4 percent takes the same share of a 6,000 pixel photo as of a 1,200 pixel one, so a batch of mixed sizes comes out consistent. The margin from the edge works the same way. Pick one of nine positions, or switch on Repeat across the image and set the spacing between copies.

The preview shows the mark on the first photo of the batch as you change the settings. Check it on a light and a dark photo if your batch has both: white text with a soft shadow, the default, stays readable on either.

Text or logo

Text is quick: a name, a website or a copyright line such as "© 2026 Your Name", in a sans, serif, mono or script style, in any colour. A logo looks more professional; use a PNG or SVG with a transparent background so only the logo shows, not a white box around it. Its width follows the photo's width too, like the text.

Opacity around 40 to 70 percent lets the photo show through while the mark stays clear. Rotation tilts the mark, which is common for repeated patterns and makes them harder to clone out.

Keep your originals

The watermark is drawn into the pixels and cannot be taken off later, so always keep an unmarked copy. Photos are saved again in their own format, PNG and WebP as they are and others as JPG at 92 percent quality, and the new files carry no camera metadata or location. If you also want to shrink the files for the web, run them through compress image or resize image afterwards. For PDFs, use watermark PDF.

If something goes wrong

• The mark is hard to read on bright photos. Keep the soft shadow on, raise the opacity, or use a darker colour.
• The logo has a white box around it. The logo file has no transparency. Use a PNG or SVG version with a transparent background.
• The mark looks tiny on some photos and huge on others. The photos have very different shapes: the size follows the width, so on tall portrait photos the mark is smaller relative to the height. Process portrait and landscape photos separately if that matters.