Freeware watermarking software tutorial: add watermark using Windows Paint

Digital watermarking is an easy way of providing image copyright protection. Digital watermark can be a text or picture added to digital image with special image watermarking software or with graphics editors like MS Paint. How to watermark digital photo without watermark software? This tutorial will show you how to put watermarks on your digital images using freeware Microsoft Paint (Windows built-in graphic editor)

Microsoft Paint is a simple graphics editor program that is included with almost all versions of Microsoft Windows. To launch Paint, click on the Start Button, move the mouse up to the All programs folder. Then move the mouse up to the Accessories folder. Move mouse over the Paint icon, and click on it:

To launch Paint, click Paint icon in Windows’s start menu

Paint will launch, opened to a new picture (blank). The Paint window will look like this:

Paint window

To open digital picture to add watermark to, click File to pull down a menu and then click Open. Or press Ctrl+O button combination on the keyboard.

Click File | Open to open a picture file

Clicking Open in file menu will bring up the Open window. Select necessary picture file and click Open button.

Select a file in the Open window and click Open

Now your file is opened and you can start watermarking picture. To add a text watermark over your picture, you should use the Text tool. To use the Text tool, select it from the toolbar.

Click to select Text tool

Then click the place of your picture where your want to place a text watermark. You will see a rectangle which will be the boundaries of your text. You can move this rectangle around by clicking and dragging on its borders, and resize it by clicking on the tab buttons at the corners and midpoints of the edges.

Text boundary rectangle

After drawing the text boundary, a floating Font window (AKA text toolbar) will appear. There you can choose the font name, size, and style (bold, italic, or underline).

Text toolbar

Text color can be chosen from palette in the bottom of the Paint window by clicking needed color box. If you want to define custom colors, double-click any color bow to open Edit Colors window.

Click palette to open Edit Colors window

Also, the fill space within text boundaries can be of a background color (right-click any color box of a palette to choose background color) or transparent. To allow the image to show through behind the text, choose transparent filling as shown below (this style is preferable for text watermarks).

Click to set transparent text background

So, now you can start typing your text. If needed, you can at first type the text and then adjust all settings as shown above. When you’ve typed the text and adjusted its options, click any place outside of the text boundary to finish editing.

Type your text inside of the boundary

Note After clicking outside of the boundary, text is not editable anymore! It will behave as common pixels which can be moved or erased, but can’t be edited as a text. So, make sure you’ve done everything to your liking before finishing. Also, be careful not to click outside of the boundary while editing your text.

Let’s see the watermarked picture:

Simple text watermark added using MS Paint

Also, you can make text watermark fitting your picture so that it can’t be cropped. Just set a larger font size and place your text in the middle of the picture.

Text watermark fitting image size added using MS Paint

There is one more watermark type you can add using Paint – a text annotation watermark. To add such watermark over your digital photo, use the Rounded Rectangle tool. Select this tool from the toolbar:


Click to select the Rounded Rectangle tool

Then choose necessary fill style for your rectangle - with empty outlines, filled outlines, or filled with no outline. I’ve chosen the latter.

Click to choose fill style

Then draw a rounded rectangle. Click a place on the picture where you want its upper left corner to be, drag diagonally and release the mouse button where you want the lower right corner to be.

Draw a rounded rectangle filled with color

Then type your text inside of the rectangle, and you’ll get a text annotation watermark added to your picture.

Text annotation watermark added using MS Paint

The main advantage of MS Paint is that you can use it free of charge if you use Windows OS. But watermarking in Paint is not so easy and quick as in special photo watermark software.

For example, let’s look at the same watermark types added using Bytescout Watermarking – watermarking software which allows to add text (including special symbols like ©) or logo or both as a semi-transparent watermark to any digital image or picture:


Simple text watermark added using Bytescout Watermarking

Text watermark fitting image added using Bytescout Watermarking

Text annotation watermark added using Bytescout Watermarking

Being translucent, watermarks added with Bytescout Watermarking not interferes with the user experience of the image. Also, they look more elegant than Paint watermarks. But the main advantage of using special photo watermarking software like Bytescout Watermarking is that this software simplifies watermarking process. Watermark can be added within a minute.

Also, Bytescout Watermarking can batch add watermark, so you can apply watermark to multiple images simultaneously. If you spend money on watermarking software, you’ll never spend time and efforts for applying watermarks manually.