Last Blogger Tips Tuesday, I wrote about photography tips for bloggers. Today I’m writing about why you should watermark your photos. You might have noticed that I watermark 99,9% of my images, on my website and any other social media site online. The only time I will not watermark my image is when it’s going into a magazine or something like that. Other wise, I make sure to watermark all my online work.

Should you watermark your photos?

You might be asking yourself, why? Why even bother watermarking photos for your blog? Many people are not to keen on watermarking their images since they claim it loses that professional touch. I totally disagree with this statement. I find that I love watermarked images. It’s easier to backtrack someone’s work and find the owner and in that way find more similar images. Using a watermark on your images you are telling the internet world, this is my work and it can be found here. Another reason to watermark your images, is because your image will be hotlinked or stolen and used by other bloggers to get more views. This is the dark side of blogging. Placing a watermark on your image will stir away bloggers that like to steal images and claim it’s their own because they believe no one will ever find out.

Google image search vs watermarked photos

You might be thinking, but what about google image search. Trust me, many people do not reach for it. Everyone is always two or three clicks away for that next blog post. The only time someone might doubt the credibility of a blog is if they see an image which they know does not belong to that blog and then they will google search that image.

Since your pro blog photos will be shared on various social media sites, such as, pinterest, tumblr, instagram, facebook…etc, you want people to know that it’s yours and to find you if they are interested in more similar content. People know how to re-upload images, change the name of the photo (file) and they bam.. no one will ever find the original source of that photo. I have seen this many times with makeup looks which I like. I want to find out who the original owner is and the image has been reshares and reuploaded so many times that it is impossible to find the original source. So in this way, you make it easy for people to find your blog and your content. A simple watermark will show them where to go and look for more.

I am one of those rare people that when I started blogging back in 2009, I used watermarks from day one. I understood the importance of making it easy to find me and making it hard to steal my images. I know that you can remove watermarks with no problem, but the thing is why would you hassle with that when someone else has no watermark on their photos.

I know that some bloggers, even well known bloggers, do not use watermark. I know that I find watermarks as a form of backlinking to my image. So even if someone is using my image without permission they will be advertising my website (even though it’s against my websites policy and is a direct copyright infringement to use my images without written permission).

What type of photos should you watermark?

You can only watermark images which you own full copyright over. If you were the makeup artist and the photographer took them, make sure to get on paper, who owns what and who can do what with the images. In most cases, the photographer owns the right to the images, so ask him for permission to watermark images before you do.

How to watermark a photo

How to watermark a photo? It’s really simple. All you will need photoshop, such as adobe lightroom, pixelmator or any online free photoshop program, such as picmonkey. Usually it’s very simple, where you can just add text to your image and then if you want, you can fade the text to get a softer look of the watermark. You have many online tutorials how to watermark your photo using various programs. To avoid a lengthy post, I recommend searching in google How to watermark image in (program name).

Watermarking photos is a very unique way of adding a personal touch to your images and helping readers and viewers find your content without losing valuable time online.