Protect Your Photos Using Copyright and Watermark

Recently, we saw how a bloggers content was stolen and published by a newspaper without proper permission or reference! So now everybody is conscious about security of their content. Actually no one can control the Internet but there are some ways by which we can make sure our content retains owners identification.
Best way to protect an image or photograph is adding a watermark to it.
What is a watermark?

A watermark is embedded image/logo/text/symbol on an image as mark of identification of owner.
How to add watermark to an image?
Its quite simple. And I have a FREE way of doing it for you. (Most of professional watermarking software come with price tag of more than 20$)
Where I can get a watermark image?
Good question!!! We need a logo or something like that for creating a watermark. But, how many of us have a logo? Well certainly very few( I mean 10 out of 10000). So here is a site which helps you creating a signature. Or you can just use Paint, photoshop or GIMP or nay image editing software for creating a watermark image. It can be anything that will identify your authority. Your name or your ite’s name is a good idea. Site: MyLiveSignature (http://www.mylivesignature.com/)

Step 1: Download and install FastStone Image Viewer from their download page here. or copy paste this in your address bar “http://www.faststone.org/FSViewerDownload.htm”
download size around 4 mb

Step 2: Run FastStone Image Viewer. And navigate to your intended images folder using explore on left side of its window.You can select your folder later but its simple to do it here. We will explore other features afterwards, for now concentrate on what I tell you.

Step 3: Now, go to “TOOLS” menu and then select “BATCH CONVERT/RENAME” menu. See the below snapshot for guidance. Now read next instruction, don’t start exploring yet.

Step 4: You now have to check the check-box named “Use Advanced options(Resize….)”. I have circled it in screen shot below, click to enlarge it.

On checking that box, a button appears in front of the label “Use Advanced options(Resize….)” called “Advanced Options”. Clicking it will take you to next screen where you will see lots of tabs and no other options except one t top. Ignore all others and head to “Watermark” tab. There you will see a check box labeled “Use Watermark” which upon checking will take thou to next step.

Step 5: See screen shot before reading. You already have checked circled point no 1.

Now No 2 circle around a button which is similar to “browse for file” button we usually see everywhere. Clicking it will open a dialog box for selecting the watermark image. Here you can select file of your choice(hope you are wise enough to find a good watermark image). After selecting, your watermark image will be now showing at bottom-right corner.

Step 6: Use options like position, background, shadow etc for adjusting the watermark. Or you can simply drag it. I recommend setting position as “center” and then adjusting it a little. Keeping watermark at bottom or near to edge wont work. People can crop to keep it aside.

Here you can save your settings to an external file if you are going to use same settings again. If you leave it, next time FastStone will load settings from last run!

Step 7: Now you are done with setting watermark. Push OK button and you come back to previous window. But wait, we are not done yet. You need to select an output folder. Be precise while choosing it and take care not to overwrite original ones.

Its always good to keep backup before editing anything. Select which images you want to process. You can do single as well as multiple images at a time. Now just press “start” and wait for FastStone to do its work.
Finally:

Using FastStone has many advantages. Its free, simple, powerful, capable of multiple-processing etc. As usual, I have tried to make things as simpler as I can. Techies don’t curse me for spoon feeding, all are not that capable of self learning. I know this little tutorial can be enhanced in many ways, please use it and then tell me if it requires any additions.

Output:
Now click on this image and see the enlarged version. You can see the watermark. This is just a sample, and you are free to use any small image as watermark. But do not forget that the image you choose must be able to identify you!!!

Damn, I wanted to post a nice experience I had while travelling home but this is more important.
Ask as many doubts as you can. I will try to help everybody.

Update: T94XR Suggested this site which is lot easy to use if you keep photos on Flickr.

For now Cheers
Suda