A logo in the corner of a photo does two jobs at once: it claims ownership and it advertises your brand every time the image travels. Restaurants, Etsy sellers, photographers, real-estate agents and food bloggers all do it — but the difference between "professional" and "amateur hour" is a handful of small decisions. This guide covers them all.
Step 1: Prepare a proper logo file
The #1 mistake is using a JPEG logo with a solid background — you get an ugly white box stamped on every photo. You need a PNG with a transparent background, ideally 600px wide or more. If your logo only exists on a business card or a slide, recreate it or run it through a background remover first; two minutes of prep saves every future photo.
Step 2: Size it relative to the photo
Think in percentages, not pixels: a logo at 10-20% of the photo's width works for almost every use case. That's why our logo watermark tool scales by percentage — the same setting looks right on a 4000px camera shot and a 1200px Instagram export, and batch-mode photos of mixed sizes all come out consistent.
Step 3: Opacity and color
Full-opacity logos look like stickers. Drop to 70-90% opacity for dark logos on light photos; use white (or a light version of your logo) at 60-80% on photos. The logo should be legible without competing with the subject.
Step 4: Placement
- Bottom-right — the classic. Where the eye lands last.
- Bottom-left — good when the product/subject sits right.
- Avoid center for decorative work; use it only for proofs.
Keep a margin of 3-4% so the logo doesn't kiss the edge — edge-hugging logos get cut by crops and social-media preview frames.
Step 5: When to tile
Tiling (repeating the logo across the whole image) is the nuclear option: impossible to crop out, impossible to ignore. Use it for proofs, previews and unreleased material — images that must be viewable but not usable. For anything meant to look good, stick with a corner mark. The tool has a one-checkbox tile mode.
Step 6: Batch it
Brand consistency means identical settings on every image. Tune once on a test photo, then run the whole set through bulk watermark. For text marks instead of logos, see add text to photo; for documents, watermark PDF.