There are some pretty elaborate ways to make a watermark in Photoshop if you're looking for a subtle watermark, but if you need a quick option, you can create a simple watermark in Photoshop in seven easy steps.

First, decide what you're going to use as your watermark. It can be your logo, your website URL, your business name, or any text, symbol, or image you choose to use. (If you want to keep it simple, use the copyright symbol. If you want to prove ownership of the image, use your business name or logo.)

How to Create a Watermark in Photoshop

Open the image you want to watermark in Photoshop by going to File > Open and navigating to the photo on your computer. Now follow these steps:

  1. If you plan to use text as your watermark, you can add that text using the Text Tool. If you want to use an image or logo as your watermark, go to File > Place Embedded, navigate to the image you want to use, and click Place.
  2. For both text or image watermarks, you can use the Move tool (keyboard shortcut V) to place the watermark where you want it.
  3. To resize the image, select the Rectangular Marquee tool (keyboard shortcut M) and right-click on the image and select Free Transform. Hold down the Shift key and drag the handles at the corner of the image to scale it up or down. Hit Enter to save those changes.
  4. Once your watermark text or image looks the way you want it, open the Layers panel by going to Window > Layers.
  5. Click on the layer with your watermark text or image in the Layers Panel. Click the arrow next to the Opacity option and use the slider to bump the opacity of that layer down. You can also enter the opacity percentage manually.
  6. The opacity you choose will depend on your image. In the example below, I used an opacity of about 20% for the text.
  7. Once you have the watermark looking the way you want, go to File > Save As... to save a copy of your image with the watermark. Select JPG (or the original format of your image) from the dropdown menu and click Save.

Don't forget, if you're going to use an image as your watermark, it's going to need to be in PNG format. If you tried to use the same image in JPG format, it would include the white background from that image.

If you don't have access to Photoshop, don't forget there are plenty of free apps and sites that make it easy to create a watermark.

What's your preferred method of watermarking your images? Let us know in the comments.