How to Watermark Photos to Protect Your Work
Watermarks deter theft and credit your work. What makes a good watermark, where to place it, and a free in-browser watermark tool.
By Formatly
If you post photos online — portfolio, products, real estate, social content — a watermark is your signature and your first line of defense. Not a perfect one, but a real one.
What makes a good watermark
- Short: your name, brand, or domain — ”© Your Name” beats a paragraph
- Readable but quiet: 50–70% opacity, clean sans-serif, with a soft shadow
- Well placed: corners are classic and unobtrusive; center is hardest to crop out
- Sized right: roughly 5–8% of the image width — legible at a glance, not dominating
Honest limitations
No visible watermark is unremovable — cropping and AI inpainting exist. A watermark deters casual theft and proves provenance; it is not DRM. For maximum practical protection, place it over a detailed area of the image rather than flat sky, and always archive the unwatermarked original.
Add one in seconds
Our watermark tool runs entirely in your browser: type your text, pick from nine positions, tune size, color, and opacity with live preview, then export as JPG, PNG, or WebP. Pair it with EXIF stripping before publishing — watermarks credit you, but metadata can leak your location.