We capture moments and pictures. We love our pictures and keep them on our top priority because we put our energy, soul, heart, sweat, and tears during photo capturing. That’s why we want to protect our hard work. That’s the reason why we watermark our photos, and it’s common practice in the photography industry. The concept of watermarking is quite clear and understandable, but in reality, why it’s necessary? Watermarking is a practice to print or place a text or logo on the picture to highlight the creator of the picture or avoid any picture stealing. Watermarking your photos provides you an opportunity to market your brand, your company logo, or especially your work.
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3 Reasons To Watermark Photos
Why should I watermark my photos? Is it necessary? Is there any advantage for me to watermark my photos? There are a lot of questions that arise in your mind related to watermarking photos. Let’s discuss one by one.
Marketing Purposes
You need to promote your photos; you want to promote your brand, you want to promote your company logo. Watermark makes the picture more searchable and scannable among the ocean of pictures. No doubt, it’s very beneficial for marketing your brand and logo.
When people see your images with your brand, they will be aware of your business. If you are running an e-commerce store, you can add your brand to your product photos. It can be a powerful marketing tool. People see your products, they share with others, and more people will know your products and business.
Avoid To Reproduces And Stolen
Yes, you don’t want that people stole your hard work, reproduce your hard work. And most important, keep your photos safe and secure from the people who posted your images on their website without your permission.
As a professional photographer, you don’t want other people to steal your photos and claim that the photos are their assets.
As an e-commerce store owner, your competitors cannot take your photos and use them for their websites and services.
Touch Of Professionalism
Watermark gives your image a professional touch and makes your pictures more professional and credible.
When your clients see the product photos with your company logo, they will know that you are the designer and creator, not someone else. The products are created by your company, and no other competitors can deliver great results like you.
Pros And Cons Of Watermarking Your Photos
We have mentioned earlier that watermarking your photos is necessary to maintain your photo’s individuality. Let’s have a look at some prominent pros and cons of watermarking.
Pros
1. Watermarking Highlights Your Personality When Photos Are shared
When photos are shared on different platforms, it gives exposure to your personality. Because you have a name on the photos that makes you well known among the photographers and the general public.
2. Watermarking Credit Your Energy
No doubt, watermarking on your photos gives you credit from people when people share these watermark photos.
3. Watermarking Keeps Your Work’s Individuality Maintain
Through watermarking, people won’t be able to steal your photos. Because your photos possess your name and they won’t be able to remove your watermark, right?
Cons
Although watermarking your photos has many advantages, but at the same time, it has some disadvantages as well. Let’s discuss some prominent demerits of watermarking.
1. Watermark On The Photo Can Hide Original Theme Of The Photo
A beautiful picture full of colors conveying an energetic message, but watermark on that lovely image distracts the attention of the people from the actual concept of photo. Logically isn’t it right?
2. Be Careful with Watermarks
Believe me, even your photo has beautiful, and color fonts, but if you don’t place the watermarks in the right place of the photo, it can cause ugliness and give an unpleasant look to your photos.
3. Can Be Removed Or Crop
Yes, your watermark photos can be edited easily; people can take screenshots and can edit it according to their desire.
Therefore, in order to minimize the disadvantages, you need to choose the right place to add your watermark to your photos.
Watermarks can be your really good SEO buddy.
Watermarks can be an really effective SEO tool, that’s the truth. They can help improve your online marketing strategy. Here in this section, we will give you some ideas to use watermarks to increase your SEO efforts.
We have already known that one of the most common ways to promote your products and services is through watermarks. This technique helps customers identify the product, and to create a positive association with the brand.
However, watermarks can also be used as an SEO tool. If you use watermarks to brand your products, it can help increase your organic search traffic. Let us explain a bit. When a person see your watermark on an image, if they are curious about your brand, they will search the name of your brand via search engines. If more and more users do the same thing, your brand will have a branded keyword and they may go to your website via the search results.
The key to watermarking is to use a watermark that doesn’t harm your brand and your photos. You should consider the position to place your watermarks and think about it colors.
FAQ
There are several common questions related to watermarking, here we also help you answer them:
Should I watermark my photos on Etsy?
If you are selling your products on Etsy, in our opinions, you can add your logo or watermark to your photos. Other people cannot steal them and use for their shops. When people save your images to share or to see later, they can easily remember your business name, your social media accounts, and your websites.
That’s great, right? People can forget where they get the product photos from. But when they see the images, they can remember that.
Should I watermark my photos on Instagram?
A lot of companies market and sell their products on Instagram, if you are one of them, you should. Like we mentioned above, watermarks can help people remember your business and market your brand. It also helps you protect your photos.
If you paid a lot of money to capture the products, why shouldn’t you protect your photos?
But if the watermark can distract from the content, you can choose to watermark some photos, not all.
If you don’t sell your photos or products or you are not worried about image theft, and you want to share your photos with other people, it is not necessary to watermark your photos.
The answers
In general, it is up to you and your situations to decide if you should watermark your photos or not. If you are running a business, watermarking photos can be a good option for you. It helps you promote your business and also avoid online image theft. But you also need to consider the color, size, and position of the watermarks to make your photos always look great. It is also fine that you watermark only some selected photos you need.
Sometimes you only want to add some characters, icons, signs, symbols to your images, it is okay to use watermark tools or photo editors. Some watermark tools and image editors can provide you with these functions.
If you want to share your images with broader audience and don’t need to care about your ownership, that is fine to not watermark your images.
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