The quick answer: mark the whole folder in one run
Putting your name on one photo takes a minute. Putting it on 200 should not take 200 minutes. Open the image watermark tool, add all the pictures from the folder (select them all in the file picker, or drag them in together), set the mark once and download a ZIP. Size, margin and spacing are percents of each picture's width, so a phone photo and a large scan end up with the same look.
- Add your pictures. The first one that can be opened shows in the live preview.
- Type your text and choose a font, size, color and opacity, or switch to Logo and choose a file.
- Pick one of the nine positions and a margin, or switch on Repeat across the whole picture and set the spacing and angle.
- Press the big button, then download the results one by one or all together as a ZIP.
The pictures are marked inside your browser tab, so nothing is uploaded. The results are new files, with -watermarked added to the name, and your originals are not changed.
Text or logo
| Compare | Text watermark | Logo watermark |
|---|---|---|
| Best for | A name, a copyright line or a web address | A brand mark people already know |
| Choices | Six fonts, bold and italic, color, an outline and a shadow. Any script your device has a font for | PNG, WebP, JPG or SVG. An SVG is drawn sharp at any size |
| Size | Font size as a percent of the picture's width | Width as a percent of the picture's width, keeping its own proportions |
| Watch out for | Pale text on pale photos | A JPG logo keeps its background and shows as a box |
Use a PNG or SVG with a see-through background for the cleanest logo. If your logo only exists as a GIF, BMP or ICO file, turn it into a PNG first with the image converter.
Percent sizing is what keeps a batch consistent. At 5 percent, the font is 40 pixels on a picture 800 pixels wide and 200 pixels on one 4000 pixels wide, so the text has the same proportions on both.
Position, opacity and tiling
| Goal | Setup | Trade-off |
|---|---|---|
| A credit that stays out of the way | One small mark in a corner, with a margin | Easy to crop out |
| A mark people notice | One mark across the middle, at lower opacity | Covers part of the subject |
| The hardest to remove | Repeat across the whole picture, at low opacity | Changes the picture the most |
Opacity applies to the mark as a whole. At 50 percent it is half see-through, and the outline, fill and shadow do not add up to darker patches where they overlap. The repeat option fills the picture in a diagonal pattern with rows shifted by half a step, so no straight columns show. Spacing is the gap between marks as a percent of the width, and the default angle is a gentle slope.
- White text with a soft shadow reads on most photos. On pale pictures use dark text.
- The outline option draws a thin line around the letters, which helps on busy backgrounds.
- The margin is the distance from the edge as a percent of the width. A mark too big for the room is drawn smaller so it fits, never cut off, and the result tells you.
A size that does not ruin the picture
Make the mark the smallest size you can still read at the size people will see the photo. As a starting point, try 3 to 6 percent of the width for a corner credit, then judge it in the preview. At 5 percent, a 1,600 pixel web photo gets an 80 pixel font.
The preview shows the first picture only, so test the lightest, the darkest and the busiest photo before you do all 200.
Share pictures at the size people need. A smaller picture with a mark is less useful to copy than a full size one. Change the size first, in one save, and mark second. Resize Image set to a longest side of 1600 turns a 4000 by 3000 photo into 1600 by 1200, and the image compressor can limit the longest side and shrink the file in the same step. Each save of a JPG costs a little detail, and the watermark tool saves JPG at quality 92 by default, so avoid a third lossy step.
A batch workflow for 200 photos
- Copy the originals into a folder you will not touch, and work on copies.
- Crop what needs it with the image cropper, then shrink the pictures to the size you will post, if they are larger.
- Run three test photos and adjust the opacity, color and outline.
- Add the whole batch, press the button and download the ZIP.
- Open five results at 100 percent zoom and check the mark.
A very large picture with a repeated pattern takes longer, and a phone may run out of memory sooner than a computer. If the tab struggles, run four batches of 50 instead of one of 200.
A few formats behave in particular ways. JPG, PNG, WebP and AVIF pictures are saved in their own format by default, HEIC and TIFF photos are saved as JPG, and GIF, BMP, SVG and icon files are saved as PNG. An animated GIF, WebP or PNG gets the mark on its first frame only and is saved as a still picture. Transparent areas get the mark too, and a JPG fills see-through areas with white.
Keep the original, and what happens to the metadata
The watermark becomes part of the saved picture and cannot be taken out again, so keep your unmarked originals. Camera details, the date and GPS location are removed by default, because saving a picture again does not carry them over. That is handy before posting, and removing location data from photos explains why. Choose Keep to copy the EXIF block from JPG, PNG and WebP originals if you want fields such as the author and copyright to travel with the file. The block also holds the camera details, the date and the GPS location, if the original has them, and only EXIF is copied, so rights fields stored as XMP or IPTC are not.
What a watermark can and cannot do
A visible watermark discourages casual copying and tells people where a picture came from. It does not make a picture impossible to take. A corner mark can be cropped, and a mark over the picture can be painted over, covered or reduced with editing tools, some of which do it automatically. A repeated pattern is more work to remove and is still not a lock.
The same limit applies to documents: watermarking a PDF labels it and does not secure it.
What goes wrong, and the fix
- The mark vanishes on bright or dark areas. Use white text with the shadow, dark text on pale photos, or add the outline.
- The logo sits in a white box. It is most likely a JPG, or a PNG with a solid white background. Use a PNG or SVG with a see-through background.
- The mark looks too loud. Lower the opacity, or make the mark smaller.
- A GIF stopped moving. Only its first frame is marked and saved as a still picture.
- You marked the wrong folder. The watermark cannot be removed from the results, so rerun from the originals.
- The file is bigger than before. Saving again changes the size, and a PNG keeps every pixel, so it can grow. Run the compressor if size matters.
What to do next
If the pictures are going on a site, compress images for your website covers sizes and formats. JPG vs PNG vs WebP vs AVIF helps you pick the format to save in.