Creating various patters by tiling a single character can produce some interesting watermarks.

Start off by adding a text watermark and put a single character like a -,~,|,* etc as watermark text. Remove the shadow, and select horizontal and vertical tiling options and see the result. For added effect rotate the watermark. Here are some samples -


Experiment with different characters and settings and create new patterns. Send us if you think you have created an amazing pattern. We will share it on our site and our Facebook page.

If your photo is our there on the Internet, anybody can copy it. And they can use it for any purpose without your permission or without paying you.

If your livelihood depends on your photos, or you don't want a stranger using your private photos, you must make sure people are not able to copy them.

How do you do that? How can you stop someone from downloading your photos from the Internet?

There are a few ways - the most common one is disabling the right click on the photo with the use of JavaScript. If one cannot right click on the image, he cannot save it right? Wrong! There are ways in which an image can be saved even without right clicking - you can just drag the image onto a new browser tab, or you can just take a screen shot of the screen with the Print Screen key on your keyboard, and if nothing works someone may just try to scan the screen as in the picture below!

So what to do? You cannot really prevent people from copying the photos. The only way is to add a watermark on the photo.

What is a watermark? And how does it prevent illegal copying of the photo? A watermark is a text or an image - like your logo - that you add on your photo in a way that people can see the image but they cannot use it for any practical purpose with the watermark.


If someone is trying to find a photo online for some purpose, a watermarked photo is of no use to him. So a thief would rather copy an un-watermarked image than a watermarked one.

Then, how do you add watermark to a photo?

With uMark - the batch photo watermarking software for Windows and Mac.

uMark can add different types of watermarks on hundreds of photos within minutes. It can add text, image, geometrical shapes and QR codes as watermarks. You can even tile the watermarks to cover entire photo for maximum protection - so people can't even crop your photo and use a part of it!

Download uMark now and see it for yourself.

Getty images - the world leader in stock images business adopted a new watermark last year. Instead of putting their logo or name at the center of the image they adopted a new stylish watermark which served three purposes - protecting the image, advertising the image url and giving credit to the photographer.

Here's how you can create a similar watermark for your photos using uMark.

We will add two watermarks - a shape watermark and a text watermark.

Select the photo you want to watermark, go to add watermark button and select Shape watermark from the menu that appears.

In the shape watermark settings window select rectangle shape and select a proper size for the semi transparent square that will appear on the right edge of the image. Select light gray color for the shape and set the transparency to 75%. Select position of the shape to be Center right from the 9 predefined positions.

Now add a text watermark, put the watermark content as image or your site url and then put your name below it. Set the watermark position to center right. This will make the text right aligned, make it left aligned. Remove the shadow and set text transparency to 0. Use appropriate right padding value to place the text on the left edge of the shape.

After this, save the watermarked photo and share it online. Here's the watermarked photo -

You can save the watermark settings for later use so next time you don't have to do it all over again.

Updated version of uMark for Mac is here. We have added several new features to uMark for Mac.

EXIF watermarks
You can now add EXIF properties of photos as watermarks. This was one major feature missing from uMark for Mac. It has now been added. You can access it as a part of text watermark.

Auto numbers in watermark
You can add numbers in a series as a watermark. uMark for Mac goes a step further by allowing you to specify a number with which to increase the count. So if you want want you can create a series of 1,2,3...(increment of 1) or 10,20,30...(increment of 10) or 2,4,6...(increment of 2) etc.

Resizable image watermark
Image watermark can now be resized right from within uMark. You can select to resize an image watermark in proportion to the width or height of the underlying image or in absolute pixel terms. So no matter what size is your logo, you can use it on any size of photo.

Last watermark
uMark 2 for Mac now remembers the last watermark you had added so next time when you want you can quickly add the same watermark. Just select Add saved watermark option and choose a watermark named Last Watermark.

More text watermark formatting options
Text watermark formatting options have been simplified now. You can select the alignment of the multi line watermark in a text in addition to setting the font, text size, bold, italics, underline and strike through options and color as well as shadow options for the text.

Show/Hide watermark
An checkbox next to the watermark quickly lets you turn a watermark on or off. So you can have various watermarks and you can apply them selectively without actually having to delete them.

All the existing users of uMark for Mac can upgrade to uMark 2 for Mac for free Download uMark 2 for Mac from our downloads page.

Two good news bits for photography enthusiasts

Flickr - the photo sharing service from Yahoo has announced that they will be giving 1 Terabyte of free space to all the members. That is huge. 1 TB is 1 billion bytes and you can store all the photos you can take in a lifetime on that.

We would also like to introduce a new Facebook page we have created called Awesome Photography. We will be sharing some amazing photos, photography related articles, news reports and useful tips that will help both amateur and professional photographers.

Check out Awesome Photography on Facebook.

One of the new types of watermarks introduced in uMark 4 is QR code watermark. What is a QR code? A QR code is a code like a Barcode which contains encoded information and can be scanned to read that information. You might have seen the square black pattern of QR code somewhere, in a magazine or newspaper, on a billboard or a flyer.

QR codes are a great way to pass information along to people on their mobile devices. A very common use of QR codes is to put links in the form of a QR code so people looking at the code can just scan the code and browse to your link instead having to manually type it in their browser.

You can do the same thing by adding your link as a QR code on your photos as a watermark. To add a QR code watermark select the photos and then click on Add Watermark button and from the menu that appears select Add QR Code option.

When you do that a QR Code Settings window will open up where you can write the text you want to be converted to QR code. You can write your name or just put a link to your website, blog, Facebook profile or portfolio in there. As you are typing the text you can see a QR code being generated on the photo.

You can set the size of the QR code. The size can either be in proportion to the photo being watermarked or it can be a fixed pixel size. You can also select whether the background of the QR code should be white or transparent. QR code with white background is easier to scan. Finally you can set the position for the QR code. Like all other watermarks in uMark, you can either select one of the 9 predefined positions or place the QR code at a specific postilion. You can even drag the QR code around to place it at a specific postilion.

After you are done setting the various options for the QR code, click on the OK button.

If you wish you can add more watermarks or you can save the watermarked images by clicking on the Save Images button.

When you share these photos with QR code on top of them around people may scan the code out of curiosity and can browse to your site effortlessly. Scan the QR code on following photo and see where it takes you.
Here are some recommended software/apps for reading QR codes

Android - Barcode Scanner, i-nigma, RedLaser
iOS - i-nigma RedLaser
Windows Phone - Scan
Blackberry - QR Code Scanner Pro

One of the new features in uMark 4 is the ability to add auto numbers in watermarks. Let's see how it works.

Let's say you have photos of the samples of your creation - clothes, furniture or other products that you may be selling and you want to give them a unique number and send the photos to prospective clients so they can order the designs they like. You can use uMark's auto number macros for this.

Add your photos and add a text watermark. Then double click on the Auto Number option in the list of watermark macros. A new window will open up where you can specify the numbering format. You can choose the number of digits you want for example if you want the numbers to look like 001, 002, 003... then you can select 3 as number of digits and it will appear as a macro <<AUTO:##1>> Each # represents a digit and you can manually add as many # as you want. If you put a single # it does not mean you can only number from 1 to 9. It just means that single digit numbers will not have a leading 0. So 1 will be 1 and not 01. A macro <<AUTO:#1>> will start with 01.

The second thing you can set is the starting number. By default numbering will start from 1 but if you want it to start from some other number then you can specify that number. For instance if you want the numbering to start from 31 then the macro will be <<AUTO:31>> and if you want it to be of 4 digits then the macro will be <<AUTO:##31>>. You can set both these options in the auto number window and it will generate the necessary macro for you.

After you have added the auto number macro and set other necessary properties like font, size, color, position etc you can proceed to watermark the photos by clicking on the Save Images button. Once the images are saved you can see that they all have numbers in the series starting from the number you had defined and having as many digits as you had specified. You can also check this before saving the images by checking the preview.

uMark also remembers the last number it had generated. So next time you want to add numbers to other images you have option of continuing from the last number. Say 25 images were watermarked the last time round, and you are processing more images now, if you click on the Continue from Last Number option, you will see the new numbers to be starting from where it left that is 26. This was you don't have to worry about which number was the last one and just continuing with your watermarking.

Here's a video of the auto number functionality.

New version of uMark for Windows is here, introducing uMark 4!

uMark 4 adds a lot of new features that will make watermarking images an even better experience.

Resizable image watermarks

A long standing demand of our users is now fulfilled with uMark 4. You can now resize the images you want to use as watermark right from within uMark itself. You can resize the image in two ways - proportional to the underlying image or absolute width, height.

Auto numbers in watermarks

Text watermark gets a new macro that of auto numbers. You can now add a number as a watermark and all images will get the numbers in the series. You can select the starting number, the and the number of digits you want the number to be. That's not all, uMark will even remember the last number added as a watermark so next time you want to add numbers on more images you can just resume where you left off last time.

Shapes as watermarks

With uMark 4, you can add shapes such as rectangles, ellipses and polygons as watermarks. You can fill them with a single color or a gradient. Like other types of watermarks you can set the transparency, position, rotation and size of the shapes. Shapes can have a fixed size or they can be set to proportional size depending on the size of the underlying photo.

QR code watermarks

QR codes are great way to quickly pass on any information to a mobile device. Most phones come equipped with a QR code scanner. You can add QR codes as watermarks with uMark. Put your URL in the form of a QR code on your photo so people can scan it and quickly browse to your website. Isn't that cool!

Image effects - borders and shadow
uMark 4 can add borders to your images and also give a shadow effect to make your photos stand out. You can even add watermarks on the border. You can set different sized borders on all four sides and set a color for the border and shadow.


More languages

In addition to the previously available 5 languages (English, Dutch, German, Italian and Spanish), uMark 4 is available in 3 more languages - French, Portuguese and Turkish. Use uMark in your native language.

Bug fixes and updated user interface
We have fixed a few bugs and also changed the user interface of the text watermark window to make it easier to customize text watermarks. uMark 4 is easier than ever before to use.


All the customers who had purchased uMark on or after 1 January, 2013 can upgrade to uMark 4 for free! All the other users can upgrade to uMark 4 for half the price.

Upgrade to uMark 4 now.

Check out a demo video of uMark 4

We have fixed a few bugs in uMark and released an updated version 3.13 for Windows.

This update fixes a couple of bugs related to reading EXIF values from photos and saving the images as JPG. We have also added an automated check for latest version so you can be notified when a new version of uMark is available so you don't miss out on any new features.

If you faced an error last time with uMark, please download this latest version and try again.

All our existing users of uMark 3.x can upgrade to this version for free. Users having older version of uMark can upgrade for half the price.

We have released an updated version of uMark for Windows. This update adds support for auto rotation of a photo based on it's orientation and better error handling.

Earlier uMark would load the photo as it was taken without taking into consideration it's orientation - how the camera was held while the photo was taken. Most image viewers these days display photos as per the orientation, which means if a photo was taken when the camera was held side ways the photo would still show up in upright position when you viewed it.

So this is how the photo would load in uMark 3.10 and prior

And this is how it would load in 3.11

If you want to disable the auto rotate feature you can uncheck the Auto Rotate Images option from Options menu.

Apart from this we have also added better error handling in uMark. Now when uMark encounters an unhandled error you will see and option to send the error details to us so we can examine what went wrong and fix it. If you help us spot an error and fix it, you can get a free license key to uMark! :)

All our existing users of uMark 3.x can upgrade to this version for free. Users having older version of uMark can upgrade for half the price.

Get uMark 3.11 now.