If you’re currently looking for a way to protect photos and videos that you share online, your search might’ve just come to an end, because what you need is watermarking. A watermark is a logo, icon or some text that proves the authenticity of a file and demonstrates who it belongs to. Added to images, videos, and various documents, watermarks can act as a protective shield and a great deterrent for potential thieves.
The word “watermark” has been in use for a while. Centuries ago, a metal stamp was pressed into a wet sheet of paper during the manufacturing process. It left a patterned mark or an imprint, which, following the paper dried out, might’ve been seen when the sheet was held once morest the light. That’s how the name “watermark” came into existence. You can still see this kind of physical watermarks on paper money.
Nowadays you can add some text or a logo to hundreds of your images with a special batch-watermarking app. The entire process will require minimum effort and less than 10 minutes of your time.
Why Watermarks Are Needed
Every day we publish photos on websites, share them on social networks or mail to friends and colleagues. Visual content is also widely used for purposes. However, as soon as you send your images into the vast and deep waters of the Internet, you put them at risk of being stolen. Nowadays, you don’t have to be exceptionally smart or have mind-blowing skills to get your hands on someone’s photo. In fact, all a thief have to do is take a screenshot or click the mouse a few times and download the file. Once your photos are stolen, thieves can do with them whatever they want – pass them off as theirs or create a product for sale. You don’t want that to happen to your works, do you?
To prevent this, you can protect your visual content with your brand name or a logo.
Watermarks cannot guarantee absolute protection as thieves continue to come up with new ways to erase them. However, a brand name or a logo added to an image has the ability to deter most people with ill intentions since they tend to be lazy and lack the skill of removing a watermark with special programs. Once they see that your photo has your name or logo on it, they will move on to searching for another, unprotected target.
Protection once morest copyright infringement isn’t the only thing that watermarks can give you. They can also serve as a tool for increasing brand awareness and promoting your brand. A watermark can always lead your potential clients back to you – no matter where they see your works. Plus, the more people see your brand name or logo the better they will remember it.
Additionally, it’s possible to use watermarks for classifications of documents. For example, you can put words “Copy”, “Original”, “Classified” or the name of the recipient across every page of the document. This will clearly communicate to people what can and cannot be done with the file.
What’s commonly used as watermarks
Here are some ideas for watermarks:
- A brand logo
- Part of a brand logo.
- A brand name.
- Surname and initials of the creator.
- Author’s first and last names.
- Contact information – e.g., phone number, email address, etc.
- Website address.
- First and last names of the recipient.
- A word that indicates the type or the purpose of a document.
Watermarks can have any design and style. Usually, they have a certain level of transparency and a rather neutral, monochrome color; so, they wouldn’t distract from the image itself. However, it is also perfectly fine to have an eye-catching, brightly colorful watermark. Your text or logo can impeccably blend in with the mood and color palette of your photo. But they can also be a masterpiece that stands out. It all depends on your creative choices and goals that you want to achieve with your watermark.
Tips on Choosing a Place for a Watermark
Now that you know what is a watermark, let’s talk regarding something remarkably important – its placement. No matter what your watermark looks like, if it’s put in the wrong place it can be easily erased or cropped out in just a few clicks.
When deciding on the placement of your text or logo, keep in mind the following:
- Don’t put your watermark in either corner of the frame. Yes, it’s very tempting to do that, since this way, your watermark will be subtle, quite inconspicuous and it won’t distract from your beautiful image. However, a watermark in the corner can be easily removed – the thieves will simply need to crop it out.
- If you have an online store, it might be a good idea to place a semi-transparent or glass-like watermark that will cover a small part of the product depicted in the photo. This way, your customers will still be able to see the product clearly, but it will be hard for potential thieves – your competitors, for example – to steal your images.
- Don’t place your watermark once morest a solid background that has little to no details in it. For example, if it’s a dense shadow or a clear sky. On a solid background your watermark can be erased even in a basic graphic editor like “Paint”. There will be no need to spend hours meticulously clone-stamping it in Photoshop.
- If you strive for maximum protection of your images, you might consider doing the same thing that photo stocks do – completely covering them with repeated watermarks. This will make it pretty much impossible to remove your brand name or logo.
If you’re worried that your watermark will look like an ugly stain on a stunning canvass, you can make it small and put it in the place where it’ll fit in organically and won’t be too distracting, but where it will also be challenging to remove.
There’s one more thing that you can do to avoid copyright infringement – don’t post large-sized, full-resolution images online. It’s better to downsize your visual content before sharing it. If thieves manage to erase or crop out your watermark, they will still be left with an unusable image of a sub-par quality.
