Adding a watermark to your photos can bring you benefits from several perspectives.
First of all, this is a recommended solution to discourage internet users from stealing your pictures and taking credit for your hard work. Once you add a watermark to your images, you let viewers know that those images represent your intellectual property and using them without your prior consent is illegal.
Second of all, a watermark can become a powerful marketing tool. Displaying your name, your company’s name or your logo on pictures can be a smart way to boost your online presence, to drive some traffic back to your blog or website and interact with potential clients.
If you’re looking to protect and market your work in the competitive online world, we’ve made out a comprehensive list of 10 apps for Windows to choose from:
PhotoMarks
PhotoMarks is a watermark app for Windows designed to handle batch processing. This app is as user-friendly as it gets, thanks to its three-step wizard interface. In order to watermark your photos you just have to load them into the program, apply the desired edits and select your output format and folder. Previews are also available for every step of the editing process.
With PhotoMarks you can add text and logo marks and completely customize them. You can adjust their position, rotation and size, set the transparency, apply a tile mode, select from a wide range of fonts and colors, apply special effects like stroke, shadow and bounding-box and more. One of the truly useful features of the app is the option to save your settings as Profiles and simply reuse them when necessary.
PhotoMarks provides support for over 50 image formats, including various RAW files. Besides converting, with this app you can also resize, auto rotate or add graphical frames to pictures. If you’re looking to watermark images on the go, the app also comes with a mobile version for iOS.
BatchPhoto
BatchPhoto is an easy-to-use solution to add a watermark to your pictures. There are three main stages: Add Photos, Edit Photos and Setup, where you’re free to choose your final configuration before processing your files. With this tool you can insert a copyright, trademark or registered text, camera information from the metadata records, GPS data or your own logo.
BatchPhoto gives you the opportunity to adjust the chosen watermark as you please. In that sense you can freely position, resize and rotate it, change the opacity level or select the preferred font style and color. Once you’ve finished editing your watermark, you can save the current settings for later use. The software lets you save your images on a local folder, send them via email or upload them to FTP.
In case you need to edit your photos, BatchPhoto is quite rich in features. Depending on your needs, you can resize, crop and rotate pictures, add the date and time, improve the contrast, brightness and saturation or apply artistic effects like black and white.
Arclab Watermark Studio
Arclab Watermark Studio is a solution worth considering for Windows users looking to watermark multiple photos at once. The program comes with a simple interface, which integrates your added images, the available editing options, as well a preview area.
With Arclab Watermark Studio you can insert both text and image marks and customize them in terms of font, size, color or opacity for instance. The positioning feature leaves a little to be desired, since it doesn’t allow you to freely place and rotate your mark using drag & drop. In order to set its placement you have to select from multiple predefined positions.
Additionally you have the possibility to resize, convert and add various metadata information to your images, such as camera manufacturer, aperture, exposure or GPS. You can also save your current project and import it in future editing sessions.
TSR Watermark Image
TSR Watermark Image is another watermark software for PC users looking to protect their images. The program can watermark images in bulk in a timely manner, but the definite trade off regards the interface, which is dated and less appealing in comparison to other similar tools.
In terms of protection or branding alternatives, TSR Watermark Image allows you to add simple or 3D text, images or borders. You can repeat the watermark across the image, play around with options like transparency, rotation angle, font style, color, size, while the positioning is limited to nine preset locations on the image.
The tool enables you to create your own profiles and use them again at a later stage for increased efficiency. Once you’ve finished editing, you can opt to save your images locally or upload them to WordPress or FTP.
Mass Watermark
As the name suggests it, Mass Watermark is designed to add watermarks to multiple images at the same time. The interface is simple, making it relatively easy to find what you need. With this app you can add text, image or EXIF data as watermarks and customize them with regard to the position, opacity, font, color, size or rotation.
The interesting thing is that Mass Watermark can do more than just protecting images. This app allows you to resize, crop or rotate your images and also perform retouching edits to improve the overall appearance of your pictures. These include adjusting the contrast and brightness, boosting the colors, sharpening the pictures and more.
uMark
uMark provides an intuitive design and previews during the editing process so you can visualize in real time how you watermark looks. You can insert text and logo marks to your pictures, as well as QR codes and various shapes. The app lets you fully customize them, which means you can choose your own font, size and color, tile mode and more.
uMark places at your disposal nine preset positions for your watermark, but you can also move it in any direction you want using your mouse. Pretty useful is the fact that you can save your marks as templates and simply use them again later. uMark also comes with different editions in order to protect your videos and PDF files.
Watermark Software
Watermark Software allows you to protect your pictures using text, images, QR codes and EXIF information. This tool comes with a Smart Fit feature, which can adjust the watermark’s size and position according to the different sizes or formats of the pictures. You can also change things like the size, font and color, as well as fill the entire image with the mark for increased protection.
To boost productivity, the software allows you to create your own templates, save them and load them every time you need to, without having to go through the same process. In addition to the possibility of protecting and branding your images, the tool offers options to resize, crop or decorate your pictures with various frames. It also has a separate tool for watermarking videos
Aoao Watermark
Aoao Watermark gives you the chance to add text and image marks in three self-explanatory phases: Load Photos, Add Watermark and Output. The tool is not complicated to use, but it does have its quirks. For instance, once you load your images and add the desired watermark in the second phase, you have to click on the “save and create a new layer” button in order to apply your settings and move on to the last step of the process.
Aoao Watermark enables you to customize your watermark in various ways, from choosing the location on the photo to setting the transparency and applying a single or tile mode. A drawback is the fact that resizing the text mark freely, using your mouse, can be glitchy sometimes, while resizing the logo can be done only using width and height sliders. The program offers other features in case you need to resize, crop, rotate, flip or add frames to your pics.
Star Watermark
Star Watermark is another Windows watermark app to protect and brand your images. A peculiar aspect is the structure of the editing process: first you have to create a new template, edit it and then select it to apply your watermark configuration. The customization options include changing the size, position, transparency, font, color and so on. You can also apply various effects like 3D or gradient text.
One of the disadvantages of using this software is the fact that you can’t actually move your watermark anywhere you want using drag & drop. You have to choose from multiple predefined positions and then manually modify the horizontal and vertical offset. The program has a sister tool called Star PDF Watermark, which allows you to batch watermark PDF files using your name, signature, company name or logo.
Total Watermark
Total Watermark is our final alternative which you can download in order to protect images from online theft. The program makes it easy to navigate through the various options and provides previews for each step of the process.
You can add text and logo marks and easily customize their size, font, color, opacity or apply special effects like stroke or shadow. The downside is that you can position and rotate your watermark only by manually entering the desired values. Total Watermark allows you to create your own templates and use them for future projects. Further editing possibilities include renaming, resizing and cropping photos.
