Without doing an actual count, survey, research or any calculation that involves numbers, I’m probably safe in saying there are more photos in the world now than ever.
We can thank the iPhone for the increase in photos and the popularity of smartphone cameras. Websites like Flickr, Instagram, Facebook, and others make it easy to get our photos shared with and to the rest of the world. And that makes our photos easy to steal, too. What can you do?
Marked, With Digital Water
Here’s a simple, elegant, and affordable way to put a watermark on your best photos– right from your Mac, iPhone, or iPad. It’s a clever app called iWatermark which takes a photo and drops in a personalized watermark with ease. It’s so easy and fast it’s actually fun to do.
iWatermark handles seven different types of watermarks, from text to graphic, from QR code to signature, from Metadata to Steganographic, and text on an arc. Create watermarks right on your Mac, iPhone, or iPad, and save each to be used again later on additional photos.
On the Mac, drag and drop gets you started, but there are plenty of controls and options. Watermarks can be embedded on a single photo, or batched with many photos. iWatermark+ even puts a watermark on video clips. The app comes with extra fonts to customize your watermark.
Considering the nominal price tag, iWatermark+ is packed with useful features, including the option to embed information into a steganographic watermark, and a signature scanner to capture your personal signature.
The built-in live preview lets you adjust scale, font, size, color, position and angle, as well as opacity of each watermark, which can then be saved to be used again. My favorite option is the QR Code embed which can contain a few thousand characters of information within the mark.
Why bother to put a watermark into a photo? Because it’s your photo. It doesn’t belong to someone else, but the social internet is a wild west town full of thieves, most of whom will think twice about ripping off a photo with a professional level watermark embedded in the photo.
iPhone and iPad users can choose from many watermarking apps. I chose iWatermark+ because it has a variety of useful features, it’s easier to use than most, priced right, and it’s actually fun to use. Now, get this. Not only is there a version of iWatermark for Mac, iPhone, and iPad, there’s one for Android and Windows.
