Add a text watermark to your images
Put your name, handle, site or a copyright line onto a batch of photos in one pass. Choose where it sits, how large it is relative to the image, how transparent, and whether to tile it diagonally across the whole frame so it cannot simply be cropped off. Nothing is uploaded.
How to use the Add Text Watermark
- Add the photos you want to mark.
- Type the text and pick a corner, or switch on tiling to repeat it across the frame.
- Set the size as a percentage of image width, then the colour and opacity.
- Click Add watermark and download the marked images.
Two strategies, very different trade-offs
A single mark in a corner is discreet and keeps the photograph intact, which is what most photographers and shops want. Its weakness is obvious: anyone can crop the corner off in five seconds. A tiled watermark repeated diagonally across the whole frame survives cropping, because there is no part of the image without it, but it is intrusive and unsuitable for anything you want to look good. The usual compromise is a corner mark on portfolio images and tiling on proofs, previews and client review copies that are not meant to be used as-is.
Getting the settings right
| Setting | Guidance |
|---|---|
| Size | 3–6% of image width for a discreet corner mark; 8–12% when it needs to be clearly visible |
| Opacity | 40–60% on photographs; 70%+ if the background is busy |
| Colour | White with the dark outline on works on almost anything. Solid black only on consistently pale images |
| Position | Bottom right is conventional. Avoid corners with important detail or where a platform overlays its own interface |
Because the size is a percentage of image width rather than a fixed pixel value, the same setting gives a proportionally identical mark on a 900-pixel thumbnail and a 6000-pixel master. That is what makes batch watermarking of mixed sizes practical.
Readability
The most common failure is a white watermark placed over a bright sky, where it simply disappears. The dark outline option draws a semi-transparent black stroke behind the glyphs, which keeps light text legible over light backgrounds without needing a solid label behind it. Leave it on unless you are watermarking images with a guaranteed dark area.
What a watermark does and does not do
A visible watermark deters casual copying, makes the source obvious when an image is shared without credit, and gives you something concrete to point at in a takedown request. It does not prevent theft: anyone determined enough can clone it out, and automated tools do it faster every year. It is also not a legal mechanism — copyright exists whether or not your name is on the picture. Treat the watermark as attribution and friction rather than protection.
Technical notes
The text is rasterised into the pixels, so it survives re-saving, screenshotting and format conversion. The font comes from the system stack your device provides, so a mark generated on macOS and one generated on Windows will differ slightly in shape. PNG and WebP inputs keep their format and any transparency; everything else is saved as JPG at quality 92.
Frequently asked questions
Can the watermark be removed?
With effort, yes — cloning or inpainting can erase a corner mark. Tiling makes it much harder because the text crosses the subject, but no visible watermark is removal-proof.
Will one setting work for photos of different sizes?
Yes. The text size is a percentage of image width, so the mark stays proportionally the same across a mixed batch.
Which font is used?
Your system interface font, via a standard font stack. That keeps the file small, but means the exact shapes differ between macOS, Windows and Linux.
Does this add copyright information to the file?
No, it paints text into the pixels. Metadata copyright fields are separate, and are stripped by most re-encoding anyway.
Can I use a logo image instead of text?
Not with this tool — it is text only. A logo watermark needs an image overlay, which is a different job.
Privacy
This tool runs entirely inside your browser using WebAssembly and the Canvas/File APIs. Your files are never uploaded to ToolFlint or any third party; you can verify this in your browser's network tab or by switching to airplane mode after the page loads. Read how we process files.
Last updated 2026-09-23.