How to watermark your images with PicMonkey

You’ve heard of PicMonkey, right? It’s the awesome site that has replaced Picnik in my affections since it was swallowed by Google. I use it to edit all my photos now, for the blog and otherwise. It’s free and simple to use, and has plenty of features that add pizazz to your pictures.

You’ve probably noticed that a lot of images on blogs and websites are marked in some way with the site from which they originated. Like this one from Red Ted Art Boy Crafts List:

Watermarks are essential to prevent images being stolen and used by someone else. If you need any more persuasion, you should read about when A Mummy Too had her images used on a weightloss site.

Watermarking is very simple to do, and here’s how:

1. Drag the image you want to watermark from it’s folder into the box that says ‘Edit a Photo’ on the PicMonkey.

2. Select the font tool– the letter P- from the left-hand menu bar.

3. Write the text you want to use– I use domesticgoddesque.com- in the box on the top left hand side. (If you need to edit your image in any way, you should do this first: text is usually the last thing I add to my pictures.)

4. Select your Font.

5. Click Add.

5. Drag the text box to a suitable spot on your image. I usually put mine across the bottom.

6. Drag the edges of the text box to expand or reduce the text size. I drag mine all the way across the bottom of the image: it makes it harder to crop out.

7. To change the text colour, just click on the colour chart (or enter the code of the colour you want to use in the box on the top right-hand side of the colour chart.)

8. I also use the Fade bar to make my text more transparent, since the text won’t benefit the reader in any way (other than knowing where it originated, should they see it on Pinterest) and will usually compromise what I am trying to show in my image. Drag the bar across until you are happy with your text- I tent to use somewhere in the range of 70%-80%.

9. Once you are happy, save your image– the save button is above your image. Don’t forget to label your photo clearly: if anyone uploads your image to Pinterest, this is the text that will automatically be saved as a description.

It sounds like a lot of time, but in reality it adds seconds to your existing image editing process and will save you much more time stressing in the long run. And it may increase your traffic, so it’s worth doing.