Our Hometown Blog

Stop giving away your photos for free! Our-Hometown’s WordPress Publishing Platform includes a Watermark plugin that allows you to easily apply an overlay of your logo to any photos uploaded to your website, protecting them from would-be thieves who want to re-use the content for their own benefit. This feature is included free with all Our-Hometown websites!

Once the plugin is enabled, the watermark you setup can be automatically applied to all images uploaded to the website’s media library; so there is no extra work on your end beyond a one-time configuration of your watermark.

A Settings page is available from your Dashboard, under Settings → Watermark. This page includes some pretty basic settings, such as whether you want to apply the watermark manually or automatically, and a selection box allowing you to choose which image sizes the watermark should be applied to.

When you’ve enabled Manual Watermarking, you can select any image in your Media Library and choose the Apply Watermark option to update the image with your watermark. Likewise, for an image that already has a watermark applied, you can select the image and use the Remove Watermark or Update Watermark options to either remove the watermark entirely or refresh the image with the latest changes you’ve made to your watermark.

Should you need to Apply, Remove, or Update your watermark on several images at once, you can switch to the List View option and take advantage of our Bulk Edit features. Just mark the checkbox next to the images you’d like to edit, and use the drop down menu to select an option to bulk apply the watermark (or remove/update the watermark).

The Watermark Positioning section includes a visual grid with nine positions available to display your watermark. Make your selection simply by marking the circle in the box that you’ve chosen. You can also define an x/y offset in either pixels or percentages to further refine the position of the image.

Finally, the Watermark Image section is where you will upload the actual image to be used as your watermark. Any image can be used. Newspapers commonly use their logo as the watermark, but some have opted instead for a simple text copyright message in image form. Whatever you decide, the most important thing to remember is that the background should be transparent, and your image should be saved as a .PNG or .GIF image to preserve that transparency. The watermark will not look very good if your logo contains a background.

You can also customize the scale of the image using the sliding Watermark Scale bar, or simply enter a custom size in pixels.

You can also change the Transparency of the Watermark image using a similar sliding bar. The lower the value, the less visible your watermark will be.

Another section for Image Protection offers some additional features to protect your digital property. By enabling these options, you can prevent the ability for visitors to right click on an image, or to drag & drop an image in order to save it to their computer. Still, computer-savvy thieves can find a way around these measures, and the most efficient form of protection is the image watermark itself!

If you’re interested in using Watermarks on your photos, send an email to our support team at ops@our-hometown.com to request this plugin today!

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