Free watermarking software for your photos!

I recently went on a quest for an easier way to watermark my photos. Previously I had watermarked with a Photoshop Brush that I had created, but that didn’t give me the option of adding more than one color to my watermark. I also created an Action, but it didn’t always work the way I wanted it to. I then tried just uploading my photos to SmugMug and letting SmugMug watermark them and then right-clicking them and saving them back to my hard drive. Too time consuming, and the watermark didn’t always look the way I wanted it to. So my quest began for the perfect watermarking tool.

First, I watched a video by Matt Kloskowski on watermarking with Photoshop Lightroom. He said himself the process was clunky since Lightroom wasn’t really designed for the job, and I agreed. I don’t have the latest version of Lightroom, so in all fairness maybe it’s better now.

A quick Google search led me to this gem. Yay, a Photoshop Extension! Russell Brown had the free download & video here. I loaded and was all ready to role. The only problem was that when I went to use it, the program froze up my Photoshop and didn’t work. I couldn’t find any support for the Extension. Ok, if you got that Extension to work, you can stop reading now, but for me the search was still on for the perfect watermarking solution.

Where do I go for advice like this? Photography forums of course! I found a couple of good threads about watermarking. I downloaded a couple of trial programs that were in the $20-30 range only to find that they put their watermark on the photo too until I bought the product. I wasn’t ready to buy yet, I wanted to try it first!

Finally, I ran across a forum that has the perfect FREE solution, did someone say FREE? So I tried it and it was even better then the ones that I had downloaded that you have to pay for. What is the program? It’s called, FastStone Photo Resizer 3.0. It resizes and adds your watermark and you can batch the process. Awesome possum! You can tell it exactly where you want the watermark and load your own transparent .png file in multiple colors. Below  is one of the photos I watermarked with the program. I hope you enjoy this tip.

How do you watermark your photos?