Have you seen photos and images that had transparent text or different colored images that indicated the owner of the image? It may have had a copyright symbol followed by a person’s name. Or, it could have been a company logo or other symbol. These marks are called watermarks.
As I researched this topic, I learned that the use of watermarks is a highly debated topic among photographers.
Here are the cases for using watermarks:
- To reduce the possibility of your photos being copied or stolen
- To make it easy to identify a person’s photos and brand
Here are the cases against using watermarks:
- People are going to steal and use your photos anyway
- Marks can be removed with software and applications
Photographer Todd Vorenkamp spoke this truth about posting images online: “If you don’t want someone to steal your digital image, do not put it on the web.”
Should you decide to post images online and use watermarks, here are six sites where you can mark them for free:
Watermark Your Images Online for Free
Here’s a bonus site I found: PDF Candy. You can add watermarks to your workshop handouts, flyers and other documents you want to brand. How cool is that?
What About You?
Do you use free online tools to watermark your images? If so, which one(s)?
Interesting timing on your post. I attended an Etsy webinar yesterday that told me not to watermark my Etsy pictures. The conversation was that Google search does not like watermarks and will skip over them for non-watermarked photos when available. So if I want to up my SEO chances in Google for my Etsy shop, don’t add the watermark.
I understand my Etsy photo has a much different focus than a professional photo as in your example. My thought is (as we know nothing is truly “free”) by using an actual watermark site if they might add a cookie (for lack of better word) that makes available analytics to the watermark provider?
I add my business name via text to social media photos not to keep them from being copied, but to help direct people back to my business as the photo is shared.
I do feel like Todd, if you don’t want your pic used, don’t put it on the web. “They” can always figure out how to use it. lol
Thanks for sharing this information, Lisa. I found this article that shows how Google can remove watermarks and what you can do to protect your images: https://www.theverge.com/2017/8/18/16162108/google-research-algorithm-watermark-removal-photo-protection.
That’s a good question about analytics for the provider. Clearly, they are benefiting from people using their product, but how??
And yes, we should add our business names to our images so people can visit our sites and check us out. Better yet, we should include our logos to brand our digital images. That’s a great promotional strategy I had never considered but I’m going to start.