Guide · 8 min read · free tool
Watermarks: Add Your Own, Do Not Steal a Clean Copy You Were Never Given
Sep 3, 2026 · Zelpura Editorial · All guides
A watermark is a name on your own work so a casual repost still carries the name. It is not a puzzle to be solved when the name is someone else's. This page adds a text watermark you type, in the browser, onto an image you upload locally. It does not remove a watermark. Removing one is usually the moment a 'cleanup' becomes a copy you were not allowed to make. If a client sent you a preview with their mark and you need a clean file, ask the client. The ask is the whole legal theory. A slider is not a theory.
The inputs are the job, not a formality. You pick an image and type the text of your mark, your name or your site, short enough to read and long enough to identify. Position and opacity are the design. A mark at 100 percent opacity across the subject makes the photo useless. A mark at 5 percent in the corner makes the photo easy to crop. The middle is a visible credit that still lets the picture work. Preview it at the size people will repost, not at the size on your monitor. A mark that looks tasteful at full resolution can vanish at the thumbnail size where theft actually happens. Theft is a strong word. Reposting without a name is common enough to plan for, and mild enough that a visible name solves most of it.
A portfolio photo, your name, lower right, opacity high enough to read on a white wall and on a dark one. Export, then post the watermarked file. Keep the clean file at home for prints and for clients who paid for clean. That split — public file with a mark, private file without — is the whole workflow. People who only have the marked file eventually send a client a striped proof. People who only have the clean file eventually see it on a blog with no credit. Two files, two jobs. The page makes the public one. Your folder discipline keeps the private one private.
The miss is watermarking the only copy so heavily that you cannot use it for a print. The second miss is using a mark so long it covers the product a buyer needs to see. The third miss is trying to remove someone else's mark because a listing 'would look better clean.' It would. That is why they put the mark there. If you are the owner and you lost the clean file, reconstructing your own image is a different moral situation from cleaning a stranger's. Even then, a removal filter often ruins the pixels under the text. Reshoot or ask the designer for the original before you spend an hour making a smear.
Duplicate the image. Add a short mark. Export under a name that says wm so you never send it to a print lab by accident. Keep the clean file elsewhere. If you are marking a batch, check two of them at thumbnail size. A batch setting that clips the mark off a vertical crop is a batch you will redo. For client work, agree in writing whether the delivered file is clean. Do not surprise a client with a mark they did not ask for, and do not surprise yourself by delivering clean files to a public gallery. The agreement is one sentence. Write it before the export, not after the complaint.
This page adds a watermark. It is not a watermark remover, and it should not be used to strip attribution, stock-photo marks, or preview stamps from images you do not have a license to clean. A local tool does not make that cleaner. If you own the image and lost the original, the honest path is the original file, the designer, or a reshoot. Nothing here grants copyright. A mark is a practical label, not a registration. If you need a legal remedy for infringement, a label is not a lawyer. Talk to one if the stakes are real.
Put clean files and marked files in different folders with boring names. Public and Private beat final. When a client pays for a clean delivery, you know which folder to open. When you post to a marketplace, you know which folder not to open. The watermark page is a five-minute step. The folder split is the system. Systems are what still work on the week you are busy and would otherwise drag the wrong file into the upload box.
Read the result back before you act. Read the mark at thumbnail size. If you cannot read your own name, the repost will not be able to either. Darken it or move it. Then confirm you still have the clean file, because the marked one is not a master.
A signature in the pixels is not the same as metadata. Metadata gets stripped by platforms all the time. A mark in the picture survives a screenshot more often than an EXIF credit does. Do both if you care: a visible mark for humans, and a clean private master for you. Do not rely on a caption. Captions get separated from images the moment someone long-presses and saves.
Related: Compressor · Mockups · HEIC to JPG · All 93 tools