Quick answer
A corner mark or a tiled one
// Answer
Pick by what you are actually trying to do. A corner mark signs the work and stays out of the way, and anyone determined can crop it off in one move. A tiled mark is spread diagonally across the whole frame, so removing it is far harder than cropping a corner. Use the corner for a portfolio, the tile for anything you are showing to a buyer before they have paid.
Getting it right
Settings that work
- Size around 5%. Big enough to read, small enough to ignore. Go to 8 or 10 if the mark is the point.
- Opacity around 55%. Fully opaque text looks like a mistake. Too faint and it disappears on a busy photo.
- Bottom right. A common choice, and rarely where the subject sits.
- Use a domain. "yoursite.com" is something a person can act on. A name on its own is not.
The watermark is applied last in the chain, after any crop or resize, so it is never chopped in half or shrunk into mush.
FAQ
Frequently asked questions
A corner mark can be cropped off in seconds. A tiled mark across the whole picture is much harder to remove, though not impossible: researchers have shown that a watermark applied the same way across many images can be removed automatically. If the point is to stop reuse rather than just to sign your work, choose the tiled option.
Whatever someone could search for and find you with. A domain works better than a name, because a name is not a route back to you. Keep it short: long text has to be small to fit, and small text is easy to crop out.
White on most photos, black on light or washed-out ones. Both are drawn with a soft shadow behind them, so the text stays readable even where the picture underneath is a similar tone.
Bottom right is the usual choice and rarely lands on anything important. Check the preview: every image is shown after the watermark is applied, not before.
No. The watermark is drawn on your own machine, in this tab. Nothing is sent anywhere, which matters if you are watermarking work you have not published yet.