Hello. Just a quick question, I'm not sure if this is the right section or not.

Over the years I've hosted pictures online and as time has gone by they've popped up here and there. I'm not expecting royalties here but I would like to watermark my images in the future. My question is, is there a quick and easy way of doing this rather than opening each photo, applying/designing the watermark and then re-saving as edited version before uploading?

Many thanks.

Some picture hosting sites will have a feature that does this for you e.g. SmugMug or you can get plug ins for some of the Adobe photo editing apps that also provide an easy method of watermarking. In most cases putting copyright information in the EXIF data is also a good way to prove you own an image.

Photoshop Lightroom and most image editors will either have a batch process or let you create an action to do this to multiple images.

Are you on a Mac or PC? I use EasyBatchPhoto to watermark all my images for facebook, as I can give it a folder with the images, and get it to resize, resample, watermark and save them to a folder in one. But it's Mac only and has a small shareware charge.

Thanks for the replies.

Mort that programme sounds amazing. I'm a PC user though. I need to get a photo editing programme. I had Photoshop a few years ago but lost it when I changed PC and then life got in the way and everything and I never got round to it, been put off by the cost above everything else. I would like to get back into photography again.

Worth trying GIMP - most of Photoshop's functionality with zero cost?

Probably is given I don't use it too much. Thanks again for the help.

Not too much off topic, but i would like to see examples of peoples watermarks?

Mine's more just a tag line. I'm not keen on watermarks that obscure the image - but I'm sure they're far more effective at deterring unauthorised use.

^ She is cute.

Made some watermarks up yesterday...

All these visible watermarks don't stop someone editing the picture with their own marking so why not use invisible watermarking which I believe is more secure?

It tends to degrade image quality and is often not that resilient (especially when larger images are scaled to web sizes). Plus with Facebook and the like, the amount of JPEG compression that's automatically added to uploads won't help.

Biggest issue with it for me is that a lack of visible watermark means the viewer doesn't know who made the image. I watermark mine for Facebook so people who see it can search for me if they like the work and want to employ or get hold of me for their own images. With the way FB tagging works (especially event photos) loads of people get to see the image without having any tangible connection to knowing who I am.

I guess you could do both to cover all bases?

Mine's more just a tag line. I'm not keen on watermarks that obscure the image - but I'm sure they're far more effective at deterring unauthorised use.

I could make some marks on the photo, but they would not be water :p

Irfanview is free and will batch watermark images as well as perform a multitude of other useful tasks. Every PC should have it installed.