A good blog will have photos on there that add to the content and while this isn’t true for all blogs, for most fashion and beauty types, a photo of the product or outfit will attract more people to read your posts. There is, of course, a risk that the image that you have taken time and effort in creating will be used by someone else without asking you or crediting you.
Some bloggers get around this problem by putting watermarks on their images. Putting your screen name or URL on the image in a discrete yet obvious way can detract some people from using your image, but if someone is really determined to take your image without asking, they will find ways around your watermark.
Watermarking your images can not only put people off from taking your images without asking, but also it can help drive more traffic to your blog, especially if you share the images on your social media accounts. It’s a way of branding everything you put online in a certain way,
Watermarks can be quite distracting to the reader though. If your watermark is too large, or too opaque, it can hide parts of the image that you might want the reader to be able to see.
If you do want to put a watermark on your image, most watermarks are put either in the centre of the image, or in a bottom corner. We’re going to look at Picmonkey, because it’s free and easily accessible to most people – but if you have a different image editing program, play around with it and see how you can make these work for you!
There are two ways that you could watermark an image – either just by writing your URL in a discrete place, or by overlaying your logo on the image.
First, the URL. Open your image up, and select the text menu (That’s the P on the left hand side of the page)
Type whatever you want to be your watermark – maybe your URL (if you have your own domain?) or maybe the screenname you usually go by (useful if you then get bored of your blog name!) On the dropdown on the text properties page, choose the drop down on the “Blend Modes” – we found “Overlay” was the best option for this image.
Below is an example of a few different methods of overlaying your text to make it a little less in your face. Adjusting the fade percentage and the blend mode means you can find the best one to suit that image.
If you have a logo for your blog that you’d like to use, simply open your image, but this time, go to Overlays (the three shapes under the Text menu icon) and select “Your Own”. Upload your logo (you may need to right click on it when it’s uploaded and choose the Original Size option)
For this, we changed the blend mode to overlay again, but like before, it’s about seeing what works best for your image!
Over to you. How do you feel about watermarking? Do you feel like they’re a necessity, or an annoyance?
I watermark my images just to be on the safe side, I know of someone who runs a beauty salon and the images she posted on the salon’s Facebook page were used by a stranger who tried to pass them off as her own. Thankfully she apologised and removed them, but I’d rather take the time to watermark than risk something like that happening, not that my images are that great haha
I don’t watermark at the moment, kind of in two minds about it. If I was going to use them, I prefer the subtle watermarks at the bottom of an image, although I know people could just cut them out from a screenshot.
Someone I sort of know watermarks all his images with a large fuzzy girl’s face right in the middle of the picture, however it makes the photo so distorted that you think, what’s the point of looking at these images? So I think watermarking in that way can backfire!
I usually watermark my collages at the bottom, although I know it can be removed easily. I don’t really like looking at pictures that have watermarks through the middle of them.
Although I don’t always remember to watermark at all!
There’s a way to reverse serach on google images (where you give an image url and they bring up all the site that use that image) and one of my collages had been used in a bunch of places, but none of the others.
Really obvious ones in the middle of the image (like my example, ha!) just put me off a blog – I want to see the photo, not your logo!
I’ve previously covered how to do reverse image searching but you have to know that image is being used, or have the time and patience to track every single image you upload – I’m a bit too lazy for that!
I also like to put water mark on my pictures as I did in my blog. I think the water mark should have an opacity of 60% to 75%.
When someone watermarks their picture, there’s the inference – I think anyway – that they think their image will get stolen. That they think it’s so good that other users will want to use it. But I’ve seen watermarks on unclear/too bright/poorly composed/garish etc etc pictures and I can’t help but roll my eyes (is that too mean? I’m sorry. True though.) So I personally think watermarks looks tacky.