How to Watermark Pictures

How to watermark pictures is an interesting topic which seems to have a huge range of opinions of how subtle or obvious the watermark should be. I personally cannot stand over the top watermarking and much prefer a more subtle aproach which is still impossible to remove but doesn’t detract too much from the original image. Who wants to buy an image which they are not able to view the quality of because a huge distracting watermark in the way? So we’ll be looking at the easiest ways to create a clear yet subtle watermark to protect your images online.

Watermarking images is a highly recommend method for preventing image theft. It is also very quick and simple to do using Photoshop or any other image editing software. Here is an example of an image with a subtle watermark.

This watermark effect was acheived by using Photoshop, creating a layer of white text over the top of the image, setting its blend mode to “overlay” and reducing the opacity of the text layer to 50%. This creates a nice subtle effect and obviously you are able to put anything you like in your text layer. We recommend putting your name or your website name in your watermark so anyone who likes your artwork can find you! I have to admit I have never tried cloning this style of watermark back out of an image but I really wouldn’t fancy trying it and I doubt many others would either!

Another option is to use a soft light blend mode like shown here, this gives a slightly different look to the one above and is nearly as subtle and just as difficult to remove. Either option is equally as acceptable on an image preview and both ways will help to prevent image theft for you. Your images can still be viewed and people may still download them but everytime they look at them, or show them to others your watermark can act as an advert for you.

Of course your watermark doesn’t have to be text based, it can be an image if you prefer, maybe a variation of your logo, as long as it identifies the image as one of yours. Experiment until you are happy with the look of your watermark on the image. Sometimes if your image is very pale you may need to try using black text or a dark image as a watermark though I still recommend making it quite faint so as not to distract too much from the beautiful artwork you spent hours creating!

Watermarking images provides great peace of mind for any artist wanting to publish their art on the web. We have other articles on image security online coming soon which we hope you will find useful in the fight against image theft! How to watermark pictures.