As a photographer, you’ve worked hard to capture precious moments and get your name and talent out there to the masses. But even the most professional photographers with gorgeous online portfolios risk running into a copyright issue when their images are not protected.

To prevent any kind of mishandling or abuse of their photographs, many photographers opt to add a watermark to brand their image as their own. On the other side, though, a watermark can also serve as advertisement for you.

We’ve laid out the tools you need to know about and the steps you need to follow in order to create the perfect watermark for your images – so you can reap both benefits.

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Find the right software

Creating a watermark is a totally painless process, we promise. Do your homework and look into different watermarking tools like watermark-software.com, visualwatermark.com and watermarquee.com. Some tools allow for mass-watermarking all of your images, others act as your own private detective and scour the internet for locations where your photos are being used.

Creating your watermark

The first step when creating your watermark? Add a copyright symbol and make it official. That’s right, show them you’re serious.

Whether it’s your official logo, your website or your full name, when it comes to the design of your watermark, it’s important to find a balance between making it subtle and guaranteeing it gets noticed. Be sure the color you choose isn’t bold enough to take away from your image and isn’t too transparent that it will go unnoticed. You’ll also want to make sure it’s an appropriate size – no one wants to see an image that has a watermark slapped over the center of it!

The placement of your watermark is crucial; dare we repeat, you want it to be seen but you don’t want it to be distracting. Whatever watermark you create, make sure it’s adaptable to all of your images. For some shots, it may make sense to have your watermark on the top right, where for another it may be more appropriate to have it on an angle off the side of the photo.

Extra protection

Unfortunately, images with watermarks can still be stolen and re-purposed without your permission. The upside to this of course is that your watermark will be seen wherever it may end up. But if that still makes you uneasy, we’ve called in for back up. Right Click Protect, straight from the Wix App Market helps to protect your website images (not just for photographs!) from any right-click downloading. You can add a notice that appears when users right click anywhere on your site. It doesn’t get any more secure than that!