Image Watermark Tool

About this tool

Sharing images before they are final means losing control of them. A watermark is a visible ownership claim — your name, a copyright notice, or DRAFT stamped on an unreleased design. This tool adds a text watermark without installing software or using a trial-limited app. Type any string, set the font size (10–200 px) and opacity (0.05 to 1), and place it in the top-left, top-right, bottom-left or bottom-right corner with a margin that scales with the text size. The mark is drawn in semi-bold white system text, which reads best over mid-tone and darker areas. The preview redraws whenever you change a setting, and Download PNG saves the result at the original pixel dimensions. Your photos and watermark text never leave your browser tab — Canvas composites everything locally.

Why use it

• Custom Text Watermark: Type any string as the watermark: your name, a copyright symbol with year, 'DRAFT', 'CONFIDENTIAL', or 'Not For Print'. Unicode characters such as © render normally.

• Adjustable Opacity: Set opacity anywhere from 0.05 (a faint attribution that doesn't distract) to 1 (fully opaque). Around 0.2–0.35 suits most sharing — visible enough to deter casual reuse while leaving the image usable for review.

• Four Corner Positions: Place the mark in any corner. Bottom-right is the convention for photography attribution, while top-left suits agency labels on client deliverables.

• Scales With Any Image: Font size runs from 10 to 200 px and the edge margin grows with it, so the same settings work for small web images and large camera originals.

• Full-Resolution PNG Output: The watermarked file keeps the original width and height and is saved as a lossless PNG, so no extra compression is added on top of your photo.

• Browser-Local Render: The Canvas API composites the watermark text over the image entirely within your browser tab. Your photos and the watermark text string are never uploaded to any server — important for unreleased product photos, confidential design reviews, or client deliverables under NDA.

How to use

1. Upload the image you want to watermark — PNG, JPEG, or WebP files up to 20 MB are accepted.
2. Type the watermark text: your name, a copyright notice, 'DRAFT', or any string (it defaults to UtilityKit).
3. Set the Font size in pixels (default 32) and the Opacity between 0.05 and 1 (default 0.35).
4. Pick a corner in the Position menu: Top Left, Top Right, Bottom Left or Bottom Right.
5. Click Apply Watermark (the preview also refreshes when you change a field), then click Download PNG.

When it helps

• Sharing draft design comps with a client for review — stamping DRAFT in a corner discourages premature use before final approval.
• Distributing personal photography for licensing enquiries — a name and copyright mark at low opacity maintains attribution without obscuring the work.
• Sending preview images for e-commerce product listings that have not yet gone live — prevents premature social sharing.
• Marking confidential internal screenshots or reports before including them in a presentation or document shared externally.
• Adding a subtle brand mark to social media images before posting, ensuring attribution when images are reshared or screenshotted.

Examples

Tips

• Choose a corner that sits over darker or busier content — the white text is most legible there.
• Around 0.2–0.3 opacity is the sweet spot for most use cases — visible enough to attribute ownership and deter casual reuse, subtle enough not to obscure the image for legitimate review purposes.
• Scale the font size with the image: 32 px is subtle on a 4000 px photo, so try 80–150 px for camera originals.
• Watermarks deter theft but don't prevent it — for legal protection, formally register copyright and document the original creation date. The watermark is evidence of ownership, not enforcement.
• Test how the watermark looks at the final display size, not just at full resolution — at small sizes like Twitter card thumbnails, low-opacity watermarks can become invisible and provide no deterrent.

Frequently Asked Questions

Glossary

Watermark

A visible overlay added to an image to indicate ownership, copyright, or draft status. Text watermarks use semi-transparent text composited over the image. Watermarks are a deterrent against unauthorised use and a tool for attribution, but do not prevent technically capable actors from removing them.

Opacity / alpha

A value from 0 (fully transparent) to 1 (fully opaque) controlling how much of the underlying image shows through the watermark. This tool accepts values from 0.05 to 1; lower values produce a subtle, see-through mark and higher values a bold, nearly solid one.

Tile pattern

A repeating arrangement of the watermark text that covers the entire image canvas in a diagonal grid. Tiling is the standard approach for protecting sample images and confidential documents because removing a tiled watermark requires separately in-painting every instance, which is impractical at high tile density.

Anchor position

The point on the image where the watermark is attached. This tool anchors text to one of the four corners, inset by a margin of roughly half the font size.

Stroke (text outline)

A thin border drawn around each character in the watermark text, typically white or black. A stroke ensures the text remains legible over any background — without it, light-coloured text disappears on bright image areas and dark-coloured text disappears on dark areas of the same photo.

Diagonal repeat

A watermark rendering mode where the text is rotated at an angle (typically 30-45 degrees) and repeated across the canvas in both directions to create a full-coverage tile pattern. Diagonal repeat is preferred over horizontal repeat because diagonal text is harder to remove by row-selecting or horizontally cropping the image.