Unfortunately, this has become a necessity. For the most part, people are good and honest. But they do, and can, make mistakes. And then there are people who just don’t care. Whatever the case may be, it’s important to protect your images. This is easy to do with a watermark. There are a couple ways to do this, all just as good as the last.
You can use Paint on your Windows PC. Open your image and use the text tool to insert a watermark. This is probably the least user friendly method. It will work though. And I recommend it on images that have white backgrounds only, as your watermark will have a white background.
Or use Photoshop. If you open a new file with a ‘transparent’ background and then save it as a .png file, you can use this watermark over and over. Easy and reusable… if you have access to Photoshop. However, Photoshop isn’t on all my computers (like my laptop, where I compose most of my posts) so it’s kind of a pain to watermark my images on the desktop and then insert them to my post on my laptop (where Windows Live Writer is installed).
If you use Windows Live Writer, you can add watermarks to your images as you compose your post. This is primarily how I watermark my images. There aren’t a ton of options with this watermark tool, such as limited placement of the watermark and limited sizing, but you can use any font on your computer. You can download Windows Live Writer for XP HERE. Windows Live Writer downloads for Vista and Windows 7 can be found HERE.
You can also upload your photos to picnik.com. This is now built into Blogger. After you upload your photo, click on the “Create” tab and then the “Text” option beneath that. There are several fonts to choose from, even more if you purchase a premium membership. You can drag and drop the text anywhere you want. You can resize them. And it won’t take any space on your hard drive, like software does. This is what Picnik looks like… and no, that’s not my photo.
~Krista
