Watermarking is a way to protect a photographer’s images on the internet. More specifically, it involves putting an apparent, embedded overlay on your images. It can either be text, a copyright notice or a logo. To some people, watermarking is a dirty word, but we disagree entirely.

By identifying your work through a watermark, you’re hoping to discourage its unauthorized use by anyone. Now, sometimes it works, and sometimes it doesn’t. People can and in fact still use watermarked photos without authorization, but we still believe watermarking is the way to go. Even though it’s by no means foolproof, it can help in deterring people from stealing your images.

Example of a watermark – photo by Jon Phillips

Some believe that there are disadvantages to watermarking, like the obvious blemish on your photograph. We’re going to take a look at the numerous benefits, however.

A Marketing Opportunity

In spite of the blemish that watermarking brings, there are at least two types of photographers who can actually enjoy a marketing benefit with watermarking: wedding photographers and portrait photographers. For instance, if their names are on a watermark, that could lead to business opportunities from viewers who like their work and know who to contact.

However, because watermarking is only a good marketing opportunity for, in general, these two kinds of photographers, there aren’t that many photographers who can really gain a marketing advantage from watermarking. Hence, it doesn’t provide a widespread marketing advantage for most photographers.

Protection From Theft

Another huge reason for watermarking, from the perspective of proponents, is theft protection. The cynics will say that image thieves will find a way to steal images no matter what, but watermarking can impede their plans to take credit for your work.

Think of this: It takes a lot of effort from the image thief’s standpoint to remove the watermark and, thus, take credit for your work. It will take a thief a long time and lots of hard effort to even have a prayer at successfully taking away your watermark. If he succeeds – and that is a big if – he will be left with an image that’ll bear the telltale signs of damage, again, since removing a watermark isn’t easy.

Further, the belief is that people who use others’ images are simply too lazy to take their own pictures. If we read those image thieves correctly, they’d also be equally too lazy to go through the trouble of removing a watermark, which we’ve established is a thankless job.

Getting Your Copyright out There

You’re a photographer, so you want people to respect your work. This applies to both amateur and professional photographers. Watermarking is a method of copyrighting your images as well since you want to continue the theme of discouraging would-be thieves by telling them about whom the image belongs to.

That’s why your watermark symbol should, ideally, be your copyright symbol together with your name as the owner of the image. If you can even fit your site’s URL onto the watermark symbol, then so much the better.

This also provides another subtle marketing opportunity. After all, if your site’s URL is on the watermark, it can also prompt would-be thieves to instead get in touch with you to actually ask your permission to use your picture. This can potentially lead to licensing deals and other moneymaking opportunities.

Where to Put Your Watermark

If you’ve decided to watermark your pictures, then congratulations. You’ve taken a step toward protecting your pictures.

You can’t just put your watermarks anywhere, though, because the aim of watermark placement is to do it in a subtle enough place to preserve the integrity of the image. At the same time, it’s a balancing act because you shouldn’t put your watermark in a spot on your picture where removing it would be hard to see.

Naturally, you want your watermark to take up as little space as possible on your image, so don’t paste it across the entire image. Usually, just having the watermark in a discreet corner of the image is advisable.

Applying Your Watermark to Photos

Now, all that’s left is to put your watermark on your images, so how do you do it? For starters, you can add a watermark as easily as using Microsoft Word or Excel. Then, there are more sophisticated ways of doing it, such as by using various graphic-editor programs.

Online watermarking tools are also popular. A good example is Watermark.ws.

If you want, you can also use downloadable software. Downloadable software is a good alternative since it can work faster in the watermarking process than online tools that are dependent on an internet connection (and its sometimes unreliable speeds). There is both free and for-pay downloadable software. An example of a popular one is Alamoon Watermark software. It comes in both free and for-pay versions, with the for-pay version featuring a bit more capability.

Watermarking: Fight the Good Fight Against Unauthorized Use

Watermarking is a contentious topic among photographers, to be sure. It’s one of those concepts that seems to bring about strong feelings on either side of the issue.

On one hand, you have the watermarking proponents, who will say that putting a copyright or your name on your images is the best way possible to deter image theft. Mind you, no one’s saying that it’s a surefire way to prevent image theft, but it’s a strong way.

The watermarking opponents, on the other hand, will say that watermarking tends to deface a photographer’s images by putting a blemish on it. They’ll also point out that image thieves can still steal your photo; they’ll just have to work a bit harder to do so.

At the end of the day, no one can really tell you what to do when it comes to protecting your images. Do you want to deter image thieves, or is having a blemish on your photo too much of a cost? Armed with the facts, at least now, you can make an intelligent decision about whether or not to use watermarking on your images.