As someone who makes a living out of your artwork, you’re probably aware of the dangers of image theft. What initially seemed isolated cases has unfortunately turned into something bigger. More and more internet users are stealing other people’s original pictures from their websites, blogs or image sharing websites and are posting them online, showing a complete disregard for the original author.
Copyrighting your photos is a necessary solution in this case. The US copyright law leaves no room for confusion: from the moment you take a picture, you gain complete rights of that picture. This means you can do anything you want with it and practically nobody can display it in public without your prior authorization. Unfortunately this doesn’t deter thieves as much as you’d think.
A practical solution, besides registering your photographs with the US Copyright Office, is to add a copyright watermark to your images. Inserting a watermark into your pictures can be an effective solution to discourage image theft. This way you clearly state the photo represents your intellectual property and any unauthorized use becomes a copyright infringement.
In case you’re looking to protect your original photography, you’ve come to the right place. Below we’ve created a list of 10 Mac apps which you can use to effectively watermark your images:
PhotoMarks
PhotoMarks is our first proposal to copyright your images on Mac. This app comes with batch processing capabilities, which makes it ideal for copyrighting a large collection of photos at once, and a truly intuitive interface. There’s a simple three-step wizard you need to follow: add your images, apply a customizable text or logo watermark and select your output format and folder.
PhotoMarks enables you to add a copyright symbol and completely customize the aspect of your chosen text or logo, according to your personal preferences. This means you can position it exactly where you want using drag and drop, you can resize and rotate it, select from a wide array of fonts and colors, set the transparency or apply special effects such as shadow, stroke and bounding box. You can also resort to the tile option, in case you want to spread the watermark all over the image.
To help you save time and energy, the app enables you to save your most common settings as Profiles and simply load them in future sessions. Other features include options to batch rename, resize, crop or convert photos, including support for various RAW files, as well as add graphical frames. You can upload your images to FTP, share them via email or directly on Flickr.
If you want to copyright your pictures on the go, PhotoMarks also comes with an iOS version.
PhotoMill
PhotoMill is a multi-purpose app for Mac users. You can use this program as a comprehensive photo browser and at the same time as an image editing software with batch processing capabilities. PhotoMill comes with sufficient features to help you optimize your images for online use, including the possibility to copyright your photos with ease.
With PhotoMill you can add both text and logo watermarks and customize them to your liking. This means you gain control over the position and scale of the watermark, its transparency level, choose a fixed font size or relative to the picture’s width and height, apply effects like stroke and shadow and more.
In addition to copyrighting your pictures, you can also convert, crop, trim or resize multiple photos at the same time. The app also gives you the chance to improve the overall appearance of your images. You can do this by adjusting the contrast, exposure, sharpness or white balance and by boosting the saturation.
iWatermark Pro
iWatermark Pro stands out through its ability to place at your disposal a large variety of watermark types. You can add any kind of text, metadata, your brand logo, your signature, a QR code or a StegoMark, which is an invisible watermark you can embed in the photo itself.
The app gives you the chance to customize your visible watermark according to your individual needs. You can select from various predefined locations, scale or rotate it, adjust the opacity, change its background color, choose your favorite font or add effects like aqua, emboss and shadow. Additionally you can batch rename, resize and convert images to a popular format.
iWatermark Pro does offer plenty of options for image protection and enables direct export to many social networks. On the downside it comes with a rather cluttered interface in comparison to similar programs.
PhotoBulk
PhotoBulk is a watermark app for Mac designed to help you defend against image theft. The app comes with a modern and easy-to-understand interface divided in two main parts: on the left side you have all the main options, while on the right you can view in real time the changes made to the image.
With PhotoBulk you can insert a text or a logo and customize each one to match your standards. This means you can control the placement, rotate to a certain angle and scale your mark, select from numerous fonts and colors or adjust the opacity. To improve your workflow, the app allows you to save your settings as presets and use them later.
In addition to watermarking, PhotoBulk places at your disposal options to optimize, resize, rename and convert photos in bulk.
Watermark Plus
Watermark Plus is another solution worth considering to ensure copyright protection. This Mac app is designed with a simple interface, so that you’ll quickly understand how everything goes. One of the highlights of this tool is the fact that you can choose from 17 built-in watermark profiles, to make your job easier. You can also create your own settings and save them for increased efficiency.
Watermark Plus lets you add a text, logo, script or symbol to protect your pictures and make various changes in terms of location, size, rotation, transparency, font style and more. The app offers a real-time preview for each change you make and automatically adjusts your chosen watermark to suitably fit each image. There’s also a single mode available, to separately set the watermark on each photo.
Watermark Sense
Watermark Sense is a Mac app developed to help you protect your intellectual property. This program is fairly easy to use, making sure you accomplish your task without losing time. There isn’t an abundance of features available, but if your only aim is to enhance your image protection against online thieves, it’s the right tool for the job.
With Watermark Sense you can insert text and image marks and make numerous adjustments to them. This means you’re free to place and scale them how you want, configure the opacity level, select one of the multiple blending modes or apply special effects like shadow. The app allows you to save your current configuration for later use, as well as export your settings as custom presets.
Additionally you can rotate, flip or rename your photos in bulk.
uMark
uMark is an uncomplicated, effective alternative to add a copyright notice to your photos. The app comes with a clean and clear interface, with all the main functions distributed on the left side panel, while on the right you can see a real-time preview of the changes made.
uMark gives you the opportunity to add several types of watermarks to your images. You can opt for a text, a logo, various shapes which you can fill with solid or gradient colors, as well as QR codes. Naturally, you can customize your watermark and hence adjust its placement, size and rotation angle, set the opacity or choose from various font styles and colors. If you plan on repeating the process, there’s an option to save your watermarks and load them when needed.
Mass Watermark
Mass Watermark enables you to watermark photos on Mac in batches, as the name might suggest it. The app comes with its own watermark designer, giving you the possibility to create from scratch your own text or logo mark. The interface is not the most alluring, but if you can get past the dated appearance, the tool is quite adequate for your watermarking needs.
Mass Watermark is designed with an intelligent watermark positioning feature and offers plenty of customization options for both your copyright text and logo. In addition to photo protection, you can use the app to optimize and enhance your images before uploading them online. Mass Watermark places at your disposal options to crop, rotate and resize pics, as well tweak the colors, contrast or brightness.
Watermark.ink
If you don’t want to download another program on your Mac, you can opt for a browser-based solution. Watermark.ink is a tool that gives you the possibility to watermark photos online in a secure way. The photos aren’t sent to a server, they are processed in your browser and downloaded on your computer.
The editing process is truly straightforward. You can drag & drop your files or upload them from your Mac and next start watermarking. From the left-side menu you can choose to apply a copyright text or logo and then begin adjusting it as you wish. There are numerous font styles available, as well as options to add an X cross, a curved text or use tiling. You can, of course, freely resize and position your text/logo and reduce its transparency.
Watermark.ink offers a series of customizable templates and the opportunity to save your watermark for later use. If you want to further improve your images, this online tool is designed with useful features to resize, crop or rotate. You can also create rounded corners for your pictures, add a simple border or apply artistic filters.
piQtility
piQtility is not a watermark app per se. This is a photo management tool developed for those creating visual content and in need of protecting that content online. The program is divided in three modules: the first one where you get to view, sort and organize your images, the second module where you get to edit them and the third one which enables you to create HTML picture galleries.
The Edit module gives you the opportunity to perform various operations, including to watermark your pics. For that purpose you can insert a copyright text, your website or company name, as well as your logo. You’re free to customize them with regard to their position, size, rotation angle, level of transparency and more. Besides watermarking, you can also convert, resize, crop and rotate your photos, add frames and apply special effects such as sepia, black and white or vintage.
piQtility offers you the option to save your settings as presets for later use and to directly share your copyrighted pictures on Facebook, Twitter or Flickr.
