How can watermarks help protect a family photographer’s business?

For a lot of family photographers, watermarking family photography presents two opportunities. Watermarks deter customers from using their photographs without paying for them. Watermarks could also help promote and advertise the business of family photographers. If you are a professional family photographer, here is how to maximize the potential of your image watermarks.

What’s A Watermark?

Watermarking paper dates back to the 13th century in Italy. Paper markers embedded a pattern or an image in their paper by altering the paper thickness.

This process was made when the pieces of paper were still wet, thus the term watermark. Watermarks could also be found on stationary, I.D. cards, paper currency, stamps, as well as other government documents. They’re used as a way to prevent counterfeiting and fraud.

In the realm of photography, on the other hand, a watermark is a logo, graphic, or text superimposed on an image. Watermarks assert ownership of the photo in some way. The watermark graphic may be a signature, a logo of your company, or just your name and contact details.

In the days prior to digital photos, watermarks are typically placed on the back of the photographs, preventing theft or unauthorized duplication. Today, watermarking is generally done digitally by putting another element to the photograph itself rather than a separate process. Nevertheless, the concept is still the same.

Watermarking – A Traditional Role

Family photographers have long used watermarking to prevent clients and photo thieves from using photos without consent from the original owner. In family photography, watermarking has likewise deterred clients from making copies and printing their own photographs. If the clients want another print with the family photographer’s advertisement or watermarks removed from it, they have to pay for a recopy of that print.

Selling printed family portraits has been how family photography traditionally brought in money for the photographer. They have offered their customers packages of printed photos and people who wanted extra prints paid for each additional one. Hence, watermarks have provided crucial protection for family photographers’ income.

Watermarks and Family Photographers

Nowadays, a lot of family photographers still watermark their work to prevent people from printing out pictures without having to pay for them. As innovation and technology develop how people use photos, though, this huge role of watermarking is gradually becoming obsolete. People do not usually print out photos anymore, so there is less need to deter them from doing just that without paying for the photos.

Using Watermarks in a New Way

Rather than printing out photographs, people now upload them on the internet with friends and family. When they are emailing photos or uploading them on social media, their viewers usually do not mind if the photos have watermarks on them. Hence, a watermark’s power to deter people from grabbing online pictures without consent is less in the contemporary world of uploading photos online.

Nevertheless, watermarks are still not totally obsolete. Since customers usually do not remove watermarks prior to posting them online, family photographers could turn watermarked photographs into advertisements and promotions for their business.

The people customers share their pictures with are friends and family, some of whom might be based in the same area and be prospective clients themselves. They might even contact you to take photos of their family if they like your work–and this is where watermarking comes in. A watermark could help make sure that anybody who sees your photographs knows you shot them and has your contact details.

Designing a Watermark for Both Purposes

A nicely designed watermark could still achieve the traditional role of watermarks, while at the same time helping family photographers promote when their photos are shared on the internet. To design and create a watermark graphic that does these things, they should:

• have your name (or your business’ name)
• have your website and email address
• have a professional look that matches your photos. They ought to be big enough that customers
• cannot remove them from the picture to create a print.
• be placed in a lower corner, so it does not detract from the subjects in the photo

Also, your watermark graphic should not be the focus of your photos. It should be noticeable enough that anybody who sees your work notices the watermark, but their eyes should initially be drawn to your subject or your client’s family. Modifying the font, opacity, and color of a watermark could help you strike the right balance of subtlety and visibility.

Furthermore, always ensure that you watermark all your high-resolution images. A lot of family photographers put watermarks on some hi-res images only. These photographs could be used for marketing purposes, and thus it is very important to watermark and protect them.

If you want to put a watermark on your images quickly and easily, you could use a batch watermark maker, like Watermarquee.

To create a new watermark graphic that could help protect your photographs and promote your photography business, try out Watermarquee. With this online tool, family photographers could easily and quickly create customized watermarks for their photos.

Using Watermarquee

Watermarquee does not require any downloads and installations; you use it right in your preferred web browser. You can choose to create a logo and text watermark on the website or to upload a graphic you already have as a logo for your images. You could adjust the size, location, color, and font of your watermark to match the style of what’s happening in the picture.

If you want to watermark a bunch of photos, you could upload up to 5 images at once to make the same watermark graphic on all five photos.

Nevertheless, if you have to watermark hundreds—even thousands—of images a year, you could upgrade to Pro – pay $19.00 Once ONLY- USE FOR LIFE, enabling you to add both image and text watermarks to the photos, to upload images of any size, to upload a limitless number of photographs at once, and to upload any photo file format. For a one off fee and a lot of functionalities, it is definitely worth it for family photographers.