Copyright watermark examples: what to write on a photo

United States law describes a notice as three elements that appear together: the symbol © (the letter C in a circle), the word “Copyright” or the abbreviation “Copr.”; the year of first publication; and the name of the copyright owner. The U.S. Copyright Office’s own example is “© 2017 John Doe”. The same statute says the notice “may” be placed on the work, and the Office’s Circular 3 states that notice is optional for works published on or after March 1, 1989, for unpublished works and for foreign works, although there are legal benefits to including it.

Those three parts are also what most photographers write on a watermark, because they answer the questions a viewer has: whose photo is this, and since when. The photo copyright watermark tool draws the line on the image in your browser; the {year} field fills in the current year and {filename} inserts the file’s name without its extension.

Pick the shortest line that still identifies you. The examples below use placeholder names; replace them with the name under which you want to be found.

In the United States the year in a notice is the year of first publication. The United Kingdom’s guidance instead describes marking work with the © symbol, your name and the year of creation. For an older photo published later, decide which convention your market expects and use it consistently; a range such as “© 2019–2026” is common for a series that grew over several years.

The tool’s {year} field always resolves to the current year at the moment the watermark is generated. That is right for new work and wrong for an archive, so type the year by hand when it must stay fixed.

“All rights reserved” is customary wording that many photographers add after the notice. It is not one of the elements the U.S. statute lists, so a line without it is still a complete notice; keep it if you like how it reads, drop it if space is tight.

A website or a social handle turns the watermark into a way to find you, which often matters more than the year. Use one address and write it exactly as people would type it.

On a Mac, press Option and G. On Windows, hold Alt and type 0169 on the numeric keypad, or open the emoji and symbols panel with the Windows key and the period key and search for “copyright”. On phones, the symbol sits in the emoji or symbols keyboard. Otherwise copy it from this page, or write the word “Copyright”, which the statute accepts in place of the symbol.

Keep the line under about 40 characters, start with a moderate opacity, and check the result at thumbnail size as well as full size. Place it where a crop would remove something the viewer wants, such as the lower third of the subject, rather than in an empty corner; a repeated, tiled line is harder to crop away but changes the look of the photo more.

If a brand mark says more than a name, the logo watermark tool places an image instead of text. For a whole set of photos with the same line, the batch watermark tool applies it to up to 50 files and downloads a ZIP.

A visible notice informs; it does not register anything. The U.S. Copyright Office states that registration is voluntary and that a work is protected the moment it is created and fixed in a tangible form, so a watermark neither creates nor replaces a copyright. It is also not proof of ownership on its own: keep the original files and your records.

The line can be cropped or painted over, and exporting a watermarked copy from a browser re-encodes the image, so camera metadata is usually not carried over. What happens to EXIF and other embedded data is explained in the EXIF metadata guide.

Under the Berne Convention, protection “must not be conditional upon compliance with any formality”. In the United States, copyright exists from the moment a work is created and fixed, and registration is voluntary. In the United Kingdom, you get copyright protection automatically, you do not have to apply or pay a fee, and whether you mark the work or not does not affect the level of protection.

In China, the Copyright Law lists photographic works, protects a work whether or not it has been published, and presumes the person or organisation named on a work to be its author unless there is proof to the contrary; the implementing regulations say copyright arises from the date a work is completed, and registration is voluntary. In France, the Code de la propriété intellectuelle gives the author an exclusive right “du seul fait de sa création”; no French official text requires the © symbol, which is an international custom. None of this is legal advice; ask a qualified adviser about a specific claim.