How to Add a Watermark to Your Photos on the iPhone

In a world of the internet, where most photos or videos people capture on their phones stand the chance of ending up on one of the many social media platforms, watermarking is an excellent technique to copyright your work and ensure it retains its identity. If you’re a photographer or a digital artist, a watermark is especially useful to you.

IMAGE: Umberto (Unsplash)

In watermarking, you typically place a watermark—logo, text, company name, copyright symbol, signature—over your image with the idea to accomplish two things: promote your work/brand and discourage others from reusing your work under their own name.

Most smartphone image editors—built-in or third-party—offer the ability to watermark photos. If you use an iPhone, you can watermark your photos using either the built-in Photos app or some third-party image editor.

We’ll go over each of these methods in this guide to help you watermark photos on the iPhone.

Method 1: How to Add a Watermark to a Photo in the Photos App

Apple’s Photos app has evolved over the years and introduced several editing and annotation features for users with basic image manipulation needs. Being able to add a signature to your images is one such feature, and that’s what we’ll be using to watermark images on the iPhone.

Following are the instructions to watermark a photo using Photos:

1. Open the Photos app and click on the image you want to watermark.
2. Tap on the Edit button in the top-right corner and hit the marker icon (the second icon) at the top.
   
3. Once the markup tools appear, click on the plus (+) button at the bottom and select Signature from the context menu.
   
4. Now, start drawing your signature above the line that reads Sign your name using your finger. If you’ve already created a signature at some point, select Add or Remove Signature, click on the plus (+) button, and then draw out your signature to create a new one.
   
5. Once created, hit Done, and you’ll be taken back to your image with the signature on top of it.
6. Drag the signature around and place it wherever you like.
   
7. Finally, tap on Done to save your changes to the image.
8. Alternatively, you can also watermark images with plain text. For this, in step 4, select Text from the plus (+) menu. Then, add your name, initials, company name, etc., and move it around to position it on the image. With this, you can also change certain font properties, like size, type, and color, and also increase/decrease its size if required.
   

Method 2: How to Watermark a Photo Using Third-Party Watermark Apps

Although the built-in Photos app can help you create a good watermark, it lacks advanced text formatting options. So if you want more control over the appearance of your watermark, you can consider using one of the third-party image editing apps listed below.

1. How to Add a Watermark to a Photo in Adobe Lightroom

Adobe Lightroom is a popular third-party image editing app on iOS that offers various editing options for a wide range of editing needs. Creating a watermark is one of the many useful features of Lightroom, and here’s how you can use it on your iPhone:

1. Open the Lightroom app on your iPhone.
2. Import the image to which you want to add a watermark from the Photos. Or select one of the imported pictures.
3. Click on the share icon (second button) at the top and select Export as.
   
4. On the following screen, toggle on the option for Include Watermark.
   
5. Click on Customize and make sure you’re on the Text tab. If you already have a watermark saved in a file, choose Graphic.
6. Enter your watermark text in the text field, and use the options below to adjust its various properties: font, opacity, size, etc.
   
7. Once done, move the watermark to your desired position on the image and hit the back button in the top-left corner.
8. Click on the tick button on the following screen, and then, select an option in the share sheet accordingly to either save or share the image.

2. More Third-Party Apps to Watermark Your Photos on the iPhone

While the built-in Photos app and the Lightroom app from the App Store do a fantastic job of adding a watermark to your pictures, you can use a few other image editing apps to add watermarks to your photos on the iPhone.

Here’s a list of a few such apps:

• Add Watermark
• Add Watermark – Batch Process
• Watermark Photo: Add Copyright
• eZy watermark Photos Lite
• Watermarkly
• Canva

Some of these apps are dedicated to just one task: watermarking. As a result, you get more text customization, which gives you more control over your watermark’s appearance.

Watermark Your Photos to Limit Their Unauthorized Use

While there are advantages and disadvantages of adding a watermark to images, as many on the internet would argue, we feel it can actually be really beneficial for people in the publishing and freelance industry.

Of course, your watermark’s appearance and position are detrimental to the aesthetics of your photos. And the built-in Photos app or any other third-party watermarking apps we’ve listed in this guide can help you achieve that with a few simple steps.