Guide
Watermarking without ruining the photo
Position, opacity and size — and when not to watermark at all.
A watermark that is too heavy costs you the image; one that is too light gets cropped out in ten seconds. The middle ground is narrow and mostly about opacity.
Opacity
Somewhere between 20% and 40% reads as a professional mark. Above 60% it starts competing with the subject and looks like a stock-photo preview. Below 15% it disappears as soon as the image is resized.
Position
- Bottom right — the convention for credit lines; least intrusive.
- Bottom left — safest for social platforms, because interface elements cluster on the right.
- Tiled — use it only when the point is to stop reuse, such as proof sheets and client previews. Accept that it makes the image unattractive; that is the trade.
Size relative to the image
A mark sized for a 1600 px image will look enormous when you later resize to 600 px. That is why we render the watermark after resizing — set the size for the output you are producing, not the original.
When to skip it
If the watermark will not survive your own compression, it will not survive anyone else's either. For portfolio work and paid delivery, a clean image plus the terms of your licence does more for you than a faint mark.
Ready to try it? Open the tool.