How To Watermark Photos With and Without Photoshop

Although many people don’t like to watermark photos, yet it is the most popular and an ideal way to protect your photographs from being copied or shared by others with no permission from you and without giving any credit to you. You can simply put a text watermark or a logo watermark on your photos with a purpose to display a copyright notice and save yourself from copyright theft. Yes, it will not completely stop people from using your photos without your permission but it will fulfill the purpose to a large extent.

There are various ways to apply a professional watermark (a text watermark or a logo watermark). And, you can find a large number of software or tools available out there for you to use for creating unique watermark logo and watermarking photos. But it is never possible for a single person to learn and use all of the available tools to add watermark to photos. In order to make you learn the simplest and the easiest way, we have described below the process of how to watermark a picture with the aid of Photoshop and other watermark software/apps. So just keep reading…

Part 1. How To Watermark Photos In Photoshop

No matter whether you need to apply a simple text watermark or a logo watermark, when it comes to Photoshop, both of the tasks are very fast and easy.

Option 1. Add a Text Watermark to Photo

A text watermark may consist of some words like your name, image name, your website name and even some symbols like copyright symbol, etc. Adding a text watermark to image can be thought simply as adding text to photos. You can follow the following process to put a text watermark on your photos in Photoshop:

1. First, launch Photoshop and open your photo in it.
2. Go to Layer > New > Layer, and create a new layer and give it a name of your choice.
3. While the newly created layer is active, select the text tool. Then click at the place where you want to display your watermark in the image and start typing.
   
4. Once you have finished typing your watermark text, it’s the time to finalize the font style and color. While the copyright or watermark text is selected and highlighted, go to the toolbar to change its color and font face of your choice. Pure white or pure black or 50% grey is the color that is highly recommended for the watermark.
   (Note: You can insert the copyright symbol © by holding down “Alt” key and typing “0169” as a shosrtcut method. )
5. Now it’s the time to correctly position your watermark text. You can use any corner place like bottom right corner (which we recommend the most). But always keep in mind that your text should be placed in an area where the picture colors are evenly spread across.
6. And, if you are not happy with the size of the watermark text, you can resize it by using the “Free Transform” tool. You can press “Ctrl+T” as a shortcut to start using this transform tool
7. Now, you should adjust the opacity of the layer so as to make your watermark less distracting and semi-transparent. We will highly recommend you to keep the opacity between 30% to 50% depending upon what works best for you.
8. At last, you can also give some effects to make your watermark look a bit more separated from the main picture content if you want. Finally, save the watermark design in a separate file if you are happy with everything so that you can use it on all images you want to watermark in the future.

Option 2. Add a Logo Watermark to Photo

Rather than using a simple text watermark, it is always better and highly recommended to use the logo as a watermark on your photos if you possess your own business logo. You can follow the below steps to apply a logo watermark to the photos in Photoshop:

1. First, open the image file of your logo and convert all of the image elements into black, white or light grey colors by removing all of the existing colors.
2. Open the logo image in Photoshop, and copy it across the picture which you want to apply a watermark to.
3. Drag the logo image in order to position it at the right place on the main picture.
4. Resize the logo image as per your requirement.
5. Now, in order to remove the white background in the logo image, you have to select the layer of the logo and set the blending mode as “Darken”.
6. At last, you should adjust the layer’s opacity (as we learned earlier also) to make it less distracting and semi-transparent. Now save the logo watermark in a separate file of its own so that you can easily reuse it for watermarking other images in future without needing to recreate it.

(Note: If the logo watermark that you get in the above-mentioned process is in black color and does not suit to the content of your main image, you can go to Layer>New Adjustment Layer>Invert and invert its color from black to white. Similarly, you can convert from white to black if required.)

Part 2. How To Put A Watermark On A Photo Without Photoshop?

Neither everyone has access to Photoshop nor is it comfortable for everyone to use such advanced software. If you are that kind of person and cannot use Photoshop for watermarking your photographs, here we have a piece of good news for you. You can even use the text tool available in the “Microsoft Paint” (which is freely available in all versions of Windows) to simply put a text watermark on your photos. The watermark created in this way will not be much professional and attractive, yet it is the easiest way of watermarking photos.

Just follow the steps given below:

1. Launch “Microsoft Paint” and open your photo in it.
2. Select the “Text” tool and click in the place where you want to place your watermark text in the photo.
3. Start typing the watermark text. Select all the text characters and set the font and color of your choice.
4. You can drag the text box in order to position at the right place.
5. Once everything is perfect, click anywhere outside the text box.
6. Now save your updated photo that has watermark text, and that’s it.
   

If you find out there is any unwanted object appearing on your photos before or after watermarking, you’d better use a Photo Eraser software to remove censored parts or unwanted objects from photos so as to make your photos the perfect ones. As its name suggests, this tool will help you eraser all the unwanted items in images, for example, tourists, power lines, scratches, skin blemishes and etc.

Part 3. Watermark Photos Online Tools & Free Watermark Software

#1 Water Marquee (Web-based)

This is an online watermarking tool that doesn’t require any download. It helps you put a watermark on a photo to protect it. The process is extremely simple, as you just need to upload your photo, and use the Add Text, Add Logo or Template option to add watermark. You also have the option to upload your unique logo image for your photos. After that, you are able to change the size, color, font, location, opacity and etc of your watermark.

The basic version of this watermark photo online tool is completely free and simple to use. You are allowed to upload up to 5 images at once to add watermark on them. However, if you want to upload an unlimited number of photos all at once and to upload any format of photo, we suggest you pay $10 per year for the Pro.

#2 Alamoon Watermark (For Windows Only)

Alamoon Watermark is a reliable and free watermark software for those photographers who are looking for a easy way to watermark pictures. This watermark software supports a wide range of image formats, and it is capable of converting the image file to a new format. However, the free version of this Alamoon only supports text watermarking. If you are looking for image watermarking or batch editing, you have to download the pro version.

Part 4. Watermark Photos Apps Free

#1 Salt Watermark App

Salt is an Android watermark app developed to assist users and businesses in protecting and branding their photographs. By using this app, you are able to add various text watermarks to your photos and adjust them by choosing different fonts available or by changing their position. Also, it allows you to add logo watermarks with limited customization options. You can also use Salt Watermark to do other photo edits, for instance, resizing and cropping images. After you are done, you can share your photos within the app on all social media platforms.

#2 InstaMark

InstaMark is not only a watermark photos app, but also a photo editing app that helps you stylize and edit your images. With it, you can add text mark as well as weather/location info, captions, stickers and time stamps. The app also offers various filters for you to enhance the overall appearance of your photos.

#3 Photo Watermark

Photo Watermark is another watermark app for users to protect and brand their photos. With this app, you can add various types of texts, logos, stickers, data and time stamps to your photos. In order to make the marks your own, you can not only adjust their location, transparency and rotation, but also apply special effects to make them stand out. Besides, you are able to create templates and use them later to improve your efficiency.

#4 iWatermark

iWatermark is a watermark photos app available for both Android and iPhone. It allows users to add both text and image watermark to photos. You can choose from the existing watermark examples or make your own text/logo watermarks. The best part of this app is that you can create and add a QR code to your photos so as to promote yourself. iWatermark also offers a batch processing feature for its users to work with a large quantity of images.

#5 Watermark Pro Signature & Logo

Watermark Pro Signature & Logo is an easy-to-use watermark app for iPhone users. It helps you add your own logo or make a brand new logo watermark by using the app’s built-in features and resources. It allows you to customize your watermarks by changing the position, colors, fonts and more of the marks. Similar to the Photo Watermark mentioned before, Watermark Pro also enables you to make your own templates. After you have finished watermarking your photographs, you can directly share them on social network.

Conclusion:

As you noticed above, the process of watermarking photos is not much complicated whether you execute it using Photoshop or other watermark apps and software. Yes, you might have to face some troubles while trying it for the first. But once you manage to learn the complete process, you will end up developing expertise in it.