Reply To: Watermark? When should I start doing that?

[fstopper89]

Watermarks have a few purposes:

1. To prevent theft of images online for another photographer or other business to use in their own advertising

2. To prevent a client from downloading the image and printing themselves, especially since most of the time online albums are lower resolution and lower quality, and printing at a discount lab will degrade your quality and name

3. To advertise yourself via online sharing

Most photographers and anyone knowledgeable about editing programs can remove MOST watermarks, depending on how large/complicated they are and in what part of a photo they are in. Even if you’re not charging for the photos, it’s perfectly ok for you to watermark them, if you believe someone may use it then in their portfolio and claim it as theirs or if you don’t want people downloading them. I usually watermark many of my photos that weren’t paid shoots, like of friends, mainly because it’s super good advertising. Like, I did some shots of my friend last summer just for fun, after she lost some weight and bought a new wardrobe, and I watermarked them. She shared them on her Fb profile and made a few into profile pictures. It got a lot of people then looking up my page and asking to have photos done. I save SEPARATE files. In each client’s folder on my computer, I have the full-resolution edits, and then another folder of downsized and watermarked images for posting online. When clients buy the full-resolution files or prints, they do not have the watermark on them. Some photogs will make prints with a very small watermark, but many clients dislike that, and sometimes it’s the deciding factor in booking a photographer. I’ve personally experimented with different watermarks. I’ve had just my name in a corner of the image, larger but at 50% opacity, but now I have my name in small text running across the bottom or side. I change it up sometimes, but I don’t feel like it really defaces my image. I’ve seen some horribly gaudy watermarks, or watermarks that have huge colorful logos, or watermarks that the photog tried to integrate into the photo “creatively” that look dumb.