Photographers often find out their work has traveled the hard way: a repost of their photo turns up, cropped and filtered, with their name nowhere on it.

A watermark won’t make that impossible, since anyone determined enough can crop or edit it out. What it does is keep your name on the photo wherever it travels, so people know who took it even when the post doesn’t credit you.

You don’t need paid software to add one. Here’s how to watermark photos for free on a computer or phone, batch a full shoot, or automate it on a WordPress site.

Should You Watermark Your Photos?

A watermark trades a little of the photo’s clean look for credit. Here’s what you get:

• Keeps the credit attached. If a photo is shared without a link back, your name still goes with it.
• Builds recognition. A consistent mark helps people connect your style with your name.
• Deters casual reuse. Someone grabbing a quick image for a blog or social post will usually skip a branded one.
• Makes proof galleries less tempting to save. Marked previews still let clients pick favorites but are far less useful as free downloads.

There are real downsides too:

• It can distract from the photo. A large or busy mark pulls the eye away from your subject.
• It can be removed. Corner marks crop off in seconds, and AI editing tools can erase many watermarks.

For most photographers, a subtle mark on anything shared publicly works best, with a stronger one on proofs and none on the files clients pay for.

What Makes a Good Photo Watermark

The best watermark is one people notice only when they look for it. A few decisions make the difference:

• Text or logo. Text such as “© Your Name” is quickest to set up, while a logo looks more polished.
• A transparent PNG for logos. It keeps the background see-through, so there’s no white box on the photo.
• Opacity of around 30 to 50%. It’s a starting point to adjust photo by photo.
• A size that reads but doesn’t shout. Your name should be legible on a phone screen without covering the subject.
• Placement that’s hard to crop. Corners crop away easily. Overlapping your subject’s edge, or a faint centered mark on proofs, is much harder to remove.
• One master file. Keep a high-resolution copy of your logo so every app starts from the same version.

This faint text watermark crosses the middle of a landscape, where cropping it out would ruin the shot:

Once you know the look you want, any method below can put it on your photos.

There’s no single best way to watermark photos. It depends on how many you need to mark and where they end up. Here’s how the options compare:

How to Add a Watermark to Photos for Free on a Mac or Windows PC

Both come with a free app that adds a text watermark, though neither can fade the text. Work on a copy so your original stays untouched.

Watermark Photos in Preview on a Mac

Open the photo in Preview, click the Show Markup Toolbar button and choose the Text tool. Type your name or website, drag the text box into place, and use the Text Style button for the font, style and color. Since Preview can’t fade text, small white or light gray text in a corner usually looks cleanest.

Watermark Photos on a Windows PC

The Windows Photos app can’t type text onto an image, but Paint can. Open the photo, pick the Text tool, and set the font, size and color before you type. Paint can’t fade text either, so it suits a quick solid mark.

How to Watermark Photos on Your iPhone or Android Phone

Your phone’s built-in photo app can add a text watermark, which is handy when you post straight from your camera roll. Neither app can fade the text.

Watermark Photos on an iPhone

On iOS 26, open the photo in Photos, tap Edit, then Markup. Tap the Add button (+), choose Text and type your watermark. The formatting button changes the font, size and alignment. Pick a color, then tap Done twice. Apple’s guide to using Markup on iPhone covers each tool.

Watermark Photos on an Android Phone

In Google Photos, open the photo and tap Edit, then Markup (on some phones it sits under Tools). Tap Text, type your watermark, and touch and hold it to drag it into place. Tap the checkmark, then Save as copy to keep your original. Other Android gallery apps work similarly, though the menu names vary, and the Google Photos editing help page covers the rest.

How to Watermark Photos Online with Free Tools

Free browser tools can fade your watermark, which the built-in apps can’t:

• Canva: Its free watermark maker adds your text or logo to a photo. Select it, click Transparency, and drag the slider.
• Adobe Express: Its watermark maker is free, needs no credit card, and has an opacity slider on the web and mobile.
• Watermarkly: It runs in your browser and watermarks a whole batch without signing up, but the free version adds a Watermarkly logo next to your own mark.

How to Batch Watermark Photos in Lightroom and Photoshop

If you already edit in Lightroom and Photoshop, both can watermark a whole batch. They’re paid Adobe apps, but the watermark tools are built in.

Batch Watermark Photos in Lightroom Classic

Open the Watermark Editor from Lightroom Classic » Edit Watermarks on a Mac, or Edit » Edit Watermarks on Windows. Choose Text or Graphic, then set the Opacity, Size, Inset, Anchor point and rotation under Watermark Effects. For a logo, use a PNG, since only a PNG keeps the background transparent.

To batch it, select your photos, go to File » Export, tick Watermark in the Watermarking panel and pick your saved watermark. The built-in Simple Copyright Watermark uses your Copyright metadata field, so fill that in first.

Batch Watermark Photos in Photoshop

In the Actions panel, record an action that places your logo or text. Then go to File » Automate » Batch, choose that Set and Action, and select your Source folder. Set the Destination to Folder, not Save and Close, which overwrites your originals.

Repeating this on every export gets old fast if your photos end up on WordPress anyway, where the watermark can go on automatically.

How to Automatically Watermark Every Photo on Your WordPress Site

If your portfolio and client galleries live on WordPress, the simplest option is Imagely, a free gallery plugin with watermarking built in. It can watermark every photo you upload to a gallery and add your mark to existing galleries.

We tested every step below on a WordPress site running the free Imagely plugin.

Step 1: Install the Free Imagely Plugin

In your WordPress dashboard, go to Plugins » Add New Plugin and search for Imagely. Install the plugin by Imagely, then click Activate.

Watermarking is part of the free version, so there’s nothing else to buy.

Step 2: Know How Imagely Backs Up Your Originals

There’s nothing to set up here. Imagely saves a backup of each original photo before it resizes it or adds a watermark, and that backup is switched on by default.

Imagely only watermarks images inside its galleries. Your Media Library originals are never touched, because importing from the Media Library makes a copy in the gallery.

If you change your mind, Bulk Edit » Recover from Backup restores the original upload from before Imagely resized it, so the files will be bigger.

To slim them down again, run Bulk Edit » Resize Images. Our expert guide to WordPress image optimization explains why lighter files matter.

Step 3: Create Your Text or Logo Watermark

Go to Imagely » Settings and open the Watermarking tab. Under Watermark Type, choose Text watermark or Image watermark. You can only use one at a time.

For a text watermark, fill in the Watermark Text, then choose a Font, Font Size, Color (hex) and Opacity (%). Font Size applies to the full-size image, so test it on a real photo.

Then pick a spot on the Position grid and fine-tune it with the X Offset and Y Offset fields. Here’s a white text watermark at 33% opacity, placed in the center:

For a logo, choose Image watermark. Upload your PNG to the Media Library, then paste its file path into the Watermark Image Path field. The “Example path (click to use)” helper shows the format.

Image watermarks have no opacity setting, so the transparency has to be built into your PNG. Lower the logo’s opacity in your design app before you export it as a PNG.

Your settings save automatically as you go. Click Refresh Preview to see your mark on the first image in your galleries:

The preview is scaled down, so your watermark looks bigger there than it will on the real file.

To mark every new photo from now on, turn on “Apply watermark automatically during upload” at the top. Our watermark documentation has more detail.

Step 4: Apply the Watermark to New and Existing Galleries

The automatic option only covers new uploads, so galleries you already have need one extra pass.

Go to Imagely » Galleries and tick the gallery you want. Then open the Bulk Edit menu and choose Set Watermark:

When Imagely asks “Apply watermark to all images in 1 gallery?”, click OK to add your mark to the full-size version of each image in that gallery.

Step 5: Add Your Watermarked Gallery to a Page

Open the page or post, add the Imagely block, and choose your watermarked gallery. Publish or update, then view the page to check the result. Here’s an example of a watermarked gallery:

If the mark looks too strong or too faint, recover the gallery from backup and run Resize Images again, since the backup brings back your full-size originals. Then adjust the settings and apply it again.

Want to go further? Paid plans add image protection that blocks right-click saving, client proofing and print sales. See what each plan includes.

FAQs About Watermarking Photos

A watermark won’t stop every copycat, but it keeps your name attached to your work. If a photo does go missing, check out our post on how to find your stolen photos online and what to do about it.

Don’t have Imagely yet? Get started today!

For more photography tips and WordPress tutorials, check out our blog.