Name, studio or both
The studio opens with a two-line mark — your name, and “PHOTOGRAPHY” beneath it in tracked small type — and a gallery of lockups drawn on your own photograph. Each lockup keeps your wording and changes only the type: a high-contrast serif over a sans, a formal script over tracked capitals, inscription capitals with a rule between the lines, a condensed studio mark. Pick one and every setting stays open to change.
Line two has its own face, weight, size relative to line one, letter-spacing and capitals, so the pair keeps its proportion on every picture. Letter-spacing applies to Latin wording; a name in Devanagari keeps its own shaping, and the bundled Noto Devanagari faces carry Hindi wording properly.
Script against plain type
| Formal script | Great Vibes. A signature feel; needs size — keep it above about a fifth of the frame width. |
|---|---|
| Casual script | Dancing Script. Friendlier, holds up a little smaller. |
| High-contrast serif | Playfair Display. Editorial, elegant in small capitals as a tagline. |
| Inscription capitals | Cinzel. Reads as a studio name carved rather than written. |
| Geometric and condensed sans | Outfit and Oswald. Neutral, legible at any size, good for taglines and handles. |
Every face here is open-licence and ships with the site, so the mark draws the same on any device with no connection once the face has loaded. You can also use your own font file for the tab you are in.
Where photographers place it, and the costs
A small mark at the bottom centre is the convention because it costs the picture least — and a crop removes it at almost no cost to the picture either. The crop check on the placement page puts a number on that. If the images are proofs, a repeated mark is the right tool; if they are portfolio work you want shared with your name on it, the small credit is.
- A mark is a credit and a deterrent, not a lock. It does not create or prove copyright.
- Very thin script at low opacity can vanish after social-media compression. Give script marks more weight than plain ones.
One recipe for portrait and landscape
Size is a share of each picture’s width, so a mark that is right on a landscape frame is too wide on a portrait one. Switch on “Place portrait pictures separately” under Place and tall frames get their own grid point and size; the recipe proof shows both. Save the settings, or a recipe file, and run a whole shoot on the batch route.
Photography watermark questions
What should a photography watermark say?
Your name, or your studio's, and at most one more thing: “Photography”, a town, a year or a web address. Every extra word makes the mark wider for the same type size, so the more it says the smaller each word has to be. Two lines — the name, and a short tagline in small capitals underneath — is the arrangement most studios settle on because it reads at a tenth of the frame.
Script or plain type?
Script reads as a signature and suits portraits and weddings; it also loses legibility fastest when small and faint, so give it more size and opacity than plain type. A plain or high-contrast serif in small capitals reads at any size and suits landscapes, products and editorial work. The lockups on this page pair the two: a name in one face, the tagline in the other.
Where do photographers usually put it?
Bottom centre or a bottom corner, small and faint, where it travels with a repost without competing with the picture. That placement is about credit rather than protection — a crop removes it. For proofs and previews, repeat it across the frame instead.