How to Watermark Your Images

Protect your prized photos and graphics with watermarks! Smart designers and bloggers always use a watermark with the name of their company or URL in a small inconspicuous space but still visible, are done with a purpose - to protect the image from possibly getting stolen or plagiarized.

Yes, let's be honest, if someone does want to steal a picture from you, they will, and nothing you can do to prevent it, but the presence of your watermark will make it less likely, as it's imprinted on the picture and can't be removed. That's why you see these on images whenever you visit a stock photo site - the pictures that are not free will be watermarked and you know you can't just take them. If we spent all day worrying about our work getting stolen, none of us would become marketers, so there's that.

It's easy to do, too. Go into one of your favorite graphics programs and choose to create a new image, and when prompted, choose the Transparent option for the background. You'll know this is correct when the canvas backdrop looks like a gray and white checkerboard.

Write your company or website/blog name using the Text tool, feel free to change the font to reflect your own branding.

Best to make the color white, so choose that as well, the pure white hex code is #FFFFFF.

Select the transparency tool and adjust the design so that it is lighter in color and looks semi-opaque.

Save as "YOUR SITE NAME_watermark" as a .png file. Png is a common file format that stands for "Portable Network Graphics" and will enable you to create a solid image with a transparent background, that also can be modified in size without image quality loss.

I use this format for all of my coffee mug designs, as well as other things in which I don't want a background showing. You can save a photograph in this format, but the file size will be tremendous compared to the .jpg, so it is best reserved for vector drawings/clip art/simple designs instead.

To Use Your Watermark

Every time you modify an image that you plan on using whether it's a blog post or other media, go back to your saved watermark (some programs will enable you to save it on a cloud-based server so you won't have to dig through your hard drive each time.)

You can do this by choosing an option like "Add new image" and when prompted, choose the saved watermark from the location on the server.

Drop it in an area of the picture, such as the corner, where it will be visible but not obscure it. Hit save, and you are done!

That's all you have to do when it comes to watermarks for your graphics and using them.