Watermark
Composite a text or image mark into your gallery photos, so what gets published isn't your original file.
Watermark stamps a mark onto the images a gallery serves. It isn't a CSS overlay sitting on top of a picture — the mark is baked into a new copy of the file, and that copy is what the page links to. Right-click Save image as… saves the watermarked version.
Two switches, in two places
| Decision | Where |
|---|---|
| Should this gallery's images be watermarked? | The gallery's Image & Video Settings → Image Watermark toggle. |
| What is the mark, and where does it sit? | Settings → Modules → Watermark, behind the gear. |
So you design your watermark once and then opt individual galleries into it. Both have to be on: the module off means no gallery is watermarked, however its toggle is set.
The toggle disappears when the module is off
With the Watermark module switched off, the per-gallery toggle isn't shown at all — a control for a mark the site will never draw is a wrong control, not a disabled one. Your stored value is preserved; switch the module back on and it's as you left it.
Setting up the mark
Shaped Gallery → Settings → Modules → Watermark → gear.
Choose a type
| Setting | What it does |
|---|---|
| Watermark Type | Image or Text. Everything below adapts. |
Image watermarks
| Setting | What it does |
|---|---|
| Watermark Image | Pick the mark from your Media Library. A transparent PNG or an SVG works best. |
| Image Size | Width and Height in pixels. Leave Height empty for Auto — the mark keeps its proportions. |
| Image Quality | Re-encode quality of the watermarked copy, as a percentage. |
Text watermarks
| Setting | What it does |
|---|---|
| Watermark Text | The words to stamp. |
| Text Size | The height of the text in pixels. This is the rendered size — there's no separate resize step. |
| Text Color | The colour of the text. The decorative patterns below pick this colour up automatically. |
Placement — shared by both types
| Setting | What it does |
|---|---|
| Display Style | Default (the bare mark), Style One (a dashed diagonal lattice), Style Two (a diamond). |
| Repeat Watermark | Tile the mark across the whole image instead of placing it once. |
| Watermark Position | One of nine anchors, from Top Left to Bottom Right. (Hidden while Repeat is on — see below.) |
| Offset Watermark | Offset X and Offset Y in pixels, away from that anchor. Leave Offset Y empty for Auto. |
| Watermark Transparency | How see-through the mark is, as a percentage. |
Style and Repeat are independent
Display Style decides what's drawn around each mark; Repeat decides how many marks there are. Style Two with Repeat off is one mark inside one diamond. Style Two with Repeat on is a full-canvas diamond pattern. Neither setting overrides the other.
Why Position disappears when Repeat is on
Once the mark tiles across the whole image, an anchor control reads as if it still singles out one mark — which it visibly doesn't. The setting is only hidden: it still fixes the tiling's phase behind the scenes, and it comes back the moment you switch Repeat off.
Purge Watermark Cache
At the bottom of the panel. It deletes the generated copies so they're rebuilt from your originals on the next view.
You need it when you've replaced the source image file itself without changing any setting. Changing a setting doesn't need a purge — a new configuration produces new files with new names, so the old ones simply stop being used. Purge is how you reclaim the space they take.
How it works, and what that buys you
Copies, not overlays. The first time a watermarked image is requested, the plugin composites a copy and saves it. Every later view serves that saved file directly — so the cost is paid once per image per configuration, not on every page load.
No original URL is published. The tile's image, the lightbox link, the full-size file and the thumbnail are all the watermarked copies. There's no attribute left over pointing at the untouched original.
It's invisible when off. A gallery with the toggle off produces exactly the markup it did before the feature existed — no extra element, no extra class, no JavaScript, no stylesheet.
Known limits
Worth knowing before you rely on it:
| Limit | Detail |
|---|---|
| Media Library images only | External images, videos and video embeds keep their originals. There's no attachment to build a copy from. |
| No retina candidates on a watermarked gallery | Responsive image candidates are dropped, because a browser picking one would be picking an unwatermarked file — defeating the point. A watermarked gallery serves one file per image. |
| The original is still on your server | Its own uploads URL still works if someone knows it. The guarantee is "we publish no original URL", not "the original is unreachable". |
| Needs an image library | ImageMagick or GD. With neither, your originals are served unmarked rather than the page failing. |
| Some formats are skipped | Animated GIFs and a few exotic colour profiles are served unchanged. |
Watermarking is deterrence, not DRM
It makes casual reuse obvious and attributable. It does not make an image impossible to take. Pair it with Image Protection and turn off the lightbox's Download button if that's the goal — but price your expectations accordingly.
A recipe
A photographer marking client proofs:
- Settings → Modules → Watermark, gear.
- Watermark Type → Text, text
PROOF — yourstudio.com. - Text Size 28, Text Color white.
- Display Style → Style One, Repeat Watermark on.
- Watermark Transparency around 35 %.
- Save Changes.
- On the proofs gallery: Image & Video Settings → Image Watermark on.
- Optionally set that gallery to Password so only the client sees it.
Troubleshooting
Nothing is marked. Check both switches: the module in Settings, and the gallery's own toggle. Then check the image is a Media Library attachment, not an external URL.
The old mark is still showing. Your browser is caching the file. Hard-refresh, or open the page in a private window. If the source file changed, press Purge Watermark Cache.
The mark is tiny on big photos. Text Size and Image Size are absolute pixels, not percentages, so the same mark looks smaller on a 4000px photo than on a 1200px one. Size it for your largest images, or turn on Repeat so it reads at every scale.
Images look softer than before. Watermarking re-encodes the file. Raise Image Quality.