How to Use a WordPress Watermark Plugin to Protect Your Images

Last Updated October 9, 2023

A WordPress watermark plugin allows you to automatically add a watermark to images and PDFs uploaded to your WordPress site. Watermarking images and PDFs is important because it helps protect your content from being used without your permission. By adding a watermark, you are adding a visible indication of ownership to your content. This can help to prevent unauthorized use and protect your brand. Additionally, it can also be used to add branding to your content, making it more recognizable and helping to promote your brand.

Since there are no watermarking capabilities built into WordPress you’ll need a plugin. We’ve put together a list of the best watermark plugins that are currently available to help you choose the best one for your project. Let’s take a look.

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Popular WordPress Watermark Plugin Options

Each of the items on our list of the best WordPress watermark plugin choices is available from WordPress.org for free. You can download the file manually from the site and upload it to your WordPress installation. Or, if you want an easier way, they can all be installed and activated directly inside of the WordPress admin.

We have summarized each plugin’s capabilities and feature sets to help you get an understanding of what’s available. We hope that, by the end, you’ll have at least one viable candidate to help you with watermarking.

For plugins with paid or premium versions, we have done our best to summarize those features as well. This should hopefully help you discern the major differences between each plugin’s free and paid variations.

Easy Watermark

Easy Watermark automatically puts watermarks on top of your images as soon as they are uploaded. Existing images may also be watermarked manually either one at a time or all at once. Your watermark can be both text and an image. Supported image formats are JPG, PNG, and GIF. The text watermark is made with TTF fonts such as Arial, Comic Sans MS, Courier New, Georgia, Impact, and more. You can set the opacity of your watermark, as well as the text color, size, and rotation of it. Conveniently, the plugin can create backups so that any images can be easily restored without the watermark you added.

Plugin Details

Image Watermark

Image Watermark is the next WordPress watermark plugin on our list. This plugin watermarks the images that have been uploaded to your WordPress media library. It also allows you to bulk watermark any images that have already been uploaded. 

This plugin has support for GD Library and ImageMagick and it comes with backup functionality. The watermark position is flexible and you can preview it before finishing. If needed, you can always undo and remove your watermark and start again. You can select the post type where your watermark will be applied if you do not want it added to every image upload.

Choose watermark sizes between original, custom, or scaled. Transparency or opacity can be set, as well as the image format from baseline or progressive. Furthermore, you can protect your images by disabling the right mouse click action in the browser. Finally, disable image protection can be disabled for logged-in users.

Plugin Details

Image Watermark WP

Image Watermark WP, the next WordPress watermark plugin we want to feature, helps you protect your photos by adding watermarks to any of your photos. The option to apply a watermark gets added to your Media Library actions with some customization options available. You can upload a custom watermark image and set its position on your images and its offset.

The plugin allows you to add a watermark to every image uploaded but, if you want it more precisely handled, you can choose post types where your watermark will be applied. You can change your watermark’s size, opacity, image format, and quality. The plugin is easy to learn and use, and you can conveniently preview your watermark image before finalizing it. 

Plugin Details

Product Watermark for WooCommerce

Product Watermark for WooCommerce is a plugin that enables you to insert watermarks on top of the images attached to products listed on your online store. Your watermark can include an image copyright symbol, company logos, or text. All it takes is a few clicks for you to apply your watermark in bulk to all your product images. You can customize where you want your watermark to be placed and adjust its transparency to your liking.

Plugin Details

Premium Version

Product Watermark for WooCommerce also comes with a paid version offering additional features to enhance the plugin’s capabilities. In the free version, the watermark has three options for size but you can customize the size exactly how you want in paid. You can also set different watermarks based on the image type they are assigned to. Another neat feature lets you save aspect ratios for your watermarks. One to five different watermarks can be made and you can place text on your images. Most importantly, the plugin gives you options to set the color of your text as well as its size and transparency. 

WaterMark PDF for WooCommerce

WaterMark PDF for WooCommerce is the final WordPress watermark plugin we will look at today. It allows you to protect your intellectual property easily. It gives WooCommerce site administrators the ability to add a custom watermark to PDFs as soon as they are sold.

The watermark is added to every page of your PDF. It is customizable by the font family, font color, font size, placement, and content of the text. As it is applied on download, you have the option to have details like a customer’s name or address included in the watermark. The plugin utilizes the TCPDI and TCPDF libraries which means the process won’t be foolproof but works well mostly.

Take note that errors may occur if your PDF is encrypted, malformed, web optimized, or if your server can’t handle the memory allocation required. Your files don’t need to be in a specific directory and you will need WooCommerce installed and activated for it to work. 

Plugin Details

Premium Version

Watermark PDF for WooCommerce Premium is the paid version of the plugin that gives you more helpful features to further the capabilities of the free version. You can do things like password protection or set permissions on your PDFs while encrypting them, keep the original file name, and begin and end the watermark on specific pages of the document. You can watermark every page, odd pages, or even pages, and give your PDFs the same settings or different ones per product.

Your watermark can be rotated, located wherever you want, made semi-opaque, and formatted by font color and style. PDF links embedded are preserved even after watermarking. Upload your own font and use it for stamping. Additional customer data can be added including business name, order number, product name, and quantity of product. Filter hooks can add barcodes and QR codes for those with development experience.

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Find the Best WordPress Watermark Plugin

That brings us to a close for our look at the best choices when trying to pick a WordPress watermark plugin. Each of the plugins here offers similar features for adding watermarks to images. One of them goes against the grain and works only on PDFs which is a unique value proposition. We think, regardless of what you need to watermark, you will find what you need from this list.

Normally, in our plugin profiles, you see more premium versions but there are not many for watermarking plugins. If you are interested in a pro plugin, please give the free version a thorough test run first. Our recommendation is to avoid paying for any plugins after you find their free version lacking in terms of interface, functionality, or support.

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Looking for More Ways to Improve WordPress?

Are you here trying to find a WordPress watermark plugin for a client project? Our White Label WordPress plugin is something you’ll want to learn more about before you go.

White Label was made so developers like yourself could customize and rebrand the WordPress admin for clients. Create custom dashboard elements, modify the login page, replace logos, make a new color scheme, and much more.

Check out the full feature list to find all of the ways White Label can help your WordPress development agency. Make WordPress less confusing for your clients and easier for you to maintain by using our plugin.

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