In this day and age, protecting your online images from misuse is truly important. There are several methods you can use to accomplish this task, with watermarking being of the most popular.
Adding a watermark to your pictures is a commonly-used technique to deter image theft. By placing your copyright text or logo onto one or several images you let everybody know you own those images and you are the only person who can use, edit or distribute them. In an ideal world this step shouldn’t be necessary, because you simply shouldn’t take something that doesn’t belong to you and make it look like you created it. But since we are far, far away from living in such a world, watermarking your photos is a must.
Here’s a list of some of the best tools available to perform this operation:
PhotoMarks
PhotoMarks is a photo watermark software available for both Windows and Mac. The tool represents an optimal solution due to its batch processing capabilities, its ease of use and wide array of watermarking options. You can process dozens or hundreds of images at once in a simple way thanks to the step-based interface: add your files in the first step, apply and edit your watermark in the second step and choose your destination and image format in the third.
PhotoMarks gives you the possibility to add a copyright, registered or trademark text, a logo, as well EXIF info to your images. You can completely customize your chosen watermark(s) by changing the position, size and rotation, adjusting the transparency, choosing the preferred font style and color, repeating the watermark across the image and more. The tool offers previews for every step of the process and the useful option to save your configuration as a profile for later use.
It’s worth mentioning that PhotoMarks supports over 50 image formats, including RAW and the modern HEIC, WebP and AVIF. In terms of editing, you can resize, crop and rotate images and also add borders and frames to them.
Make Watermark
Make Watermark is a modernly-designed online solution to quickly watermark your photos. The process is simple: import your photos, apply the watermark and export them. You have the possibility to import files from your computer, Google Drive or Dropbox and download the processed ones to a local folder or upload them to Google Photos or Dropbox.
In terms of watermarking, you can add a text and/or logo and edit it as you want. Make Watermark lets you select the preferred placement and size of the watermark, adjust its opacity and rotation, choose the desired font and color, apply various tile modes or resort to over 60 artistic effects. You can opt to have the same size in pixels of the watermark for all photos and blur faces and license plates. Before exporting you can also set the suitable image quality and format and resize your images.
Watermark Plus
Watermark Plus is a solution developed exclusively for Mac users. The app comes with an intuitive interface, single and batch modes and provides support for common image formats like JPEG, PNG and TIFF. In order to protect your photographs you can resort to both text and image watermarks, which you can customize in multiple ways.
Watermark Plus places at your disposal 17 built-in watermark profiles, as well as a scrip feature to fill your pictures with text tags. The app fits automatically your watermarks to differently-sized images and offers a single mode where you can adjust your text or logo individually for each photo. In addition to watermarking you’ll find options to batch rename, resize and convert pictures.
Mass Watermark
Mass Watermark is a tool for Windows and macOS designed, as you might have guessed it, to batch watermark images. As other software, this one too offers the opportunity to add a protection text or logo and EXIF information. What’s new in comparison to other tools is the fact that Mass Watermark comes with a built-in QR code module, which allows you to generate and add a QR code as a watermark.
The program does a pretty good job at protecting your pictures, but this is not its only feature. No, before applying your watermark you have the chance to optimize and improve the aspect of your images. For instance, you can adjust their brightness and contrast, apply a sharpen effect or resize them for web use.
Arclab Watermark Studio
Arclab Watermark Studio is a Windows program designed to add multi-layered watermarks to your pictures. The tool is relatively easy to use, with the interface divided in three main areas: the top section with the main menu and the files added, the left section with the editing options and a large preview area in the center. You can watermark a single image or multiple files and folders at the same time.
Arclab Watermark Studio allows you to insert any desired text, to import your own logo or select one from the numerous examples. The software offers a couple of interesting, built-in placement options, such as four corners or cross, but lacks the possibility to freely move your watermark across the image. You can also resize and convert your images (limited support though) and save your current settings as a project to improve productivity.
