Watermark best practices
A good watermark protects your work without ruining it. The balance depends on why you are watermarking.
For portfolios and social media
- Keep it small and quiet: your name or handle at 3–5% of the width, 40–60% opacity.
- Place it in a corner but away from the very edge, so a simple crop doesn't remove it. The edge-margin slider helps.
- Use a clean sans-serif or your own logo, and the same position on every image for a consistent look.
For client proofs and stock previews
- Use Tile mode with a rotation of around −30°, so the mark crosses the subject and is hard to clone out.
- Lower opacity to 20–35% so clients can still judge the photo.
- Deliver the clean full-resolution files only after payment.
No visible watermark is impossible to remove, but a well-placed one makes misuse much more effort than it is worth.
Text or logo: which watermark should you use?
Text watermarks are quick and flexible. A copyright line such as "© Jane Doe 2025" or your website address tells people exactly where the photo came from. Short text works best; long sentences compete with the photo.
Logo watermarks look more polished and are easier to recognise at a glance. Use a PNG or SVG with a transparent background; a logo on a white box covers part of the image. If yours only exists on white, clear it first with the transparent background tool.
You can also combine them, for example a logo bottom-right and a faint tiled URL behind it.
Colour and contrast
White text with a soft shadow reads on most photos. For bright snowy or beach scenes, try dark grey text at moderate opacity instead.
Preparing watermarked images for the web
Watermarking is usually the last step before publishing, so it pays to finish the other edits first.
- Crop and resize first. Apply your crop or social-media size before watermarking, otherwise a later crop may cut the mark off. The image resizer handles batches.
- Compress afterwards. Large camera JPGs stay large. Run the watermarked set through the image compressor for faster pages.
- Keep originals. The tool never changes your source files, so store the unmarked versions safely for clients and prints.
- Mind the metadata. Watermarked files are saved without EXIF, which removes camera details and location. If you need copyright metadata, add it afterwards in your photo software.
Each file keeps its original name with "-watermarked" added, so the batch sorts neatly beside your originals.