Watermarking

Watermarking lets customers preview their photos without giving away usable full-resolution files. On a watermarked shoot, every preview image (and video) is automatically marked before customers can see it; the clean originals unlock only after payment.

Your watermark is a workspace-wide setting — configure it once under Settings → Watermark, and it applies to every watermarked shoot. You can change it at any time.

Text vs. logo

	When to use it
Text watermark	Fastest to set up. Type your studio name or a short string. Good when you don’t have a logo file handy.
Logo watermark	Most branded. Upload a logo — a transparent PNG is best, so the background shows through. Best for a recognizable mark.

The logo upload accepts PNG, JPEG, WebP, and GIF files up to 10 MB. A logo on a solid background will paint that background over the photo, so use a transparent PNG where you can.

Adjusting your watermark

The available controls depend on the type:

Text watermark — set its opacity and color. Text marks are rendered centered across the image (angled), so there’s no size or position to set.
Logo watermark — set its size, position, and opacity.

What each control does:

Opacity (both types) — how see-through the mark is. Lower looks cleaner but is easier to crop or paint out; higher protects better.
Color (text only) — the color of the text.
Size (logo only) — how large the logo is relative to each image. Large enough to deter screenshots, small enough to still show off the photo.
Position (logo only) — where the logo sits (center or a corner). A centered mark is hardest to crop away; a corner mark is least intrusive.

A common balance is a mark at moderate opacity — visible on the subject, but the preview still sells the shot.

How processing works

When you upload to a watermarked shoot, Tobren processes each file in the background and stores a watermarked copy for previews. The originals are kept separately and are never sent to a customer until they’ve paid.

Processing happens in the background. Files show as queued or watermarking in the shoot’s media panel, and previews appear as each one finishes.
Both images and videos are watermarked.
Previews are intentionally lower quality. Watermarked preview images are resized and saved as compressed JPEGs — quick to load and a deterrent to using the preview instead of buying. The full-resolution originals customers unlock after paying keep their original quality — only the preview is compressed.
You control how much. Under Settings → Watermark, Preview size & quality sets how far preview images are shrunk (a percentage of the original dimensions) and their JPEG quality. A single shoot can override those two values from its Preview size & quality section in the shoot form.
HEIC/HEIF photos are converted to JPEG. iPhone photos (HEIC) are converted during processing, so both the watermarked preview and the purchased original are standard JPEGs that open everywhere. The JPEG is what gets delivered (the file’s name in your gallery ends in .jpg); it keeps the photo’s colour profile and follows your workspace’s photo-metadata settings like any other upload. Once the JPEG is in place, the original HEIC file is deleted — only the JPEG is kept.

When watermarking is skipped

If a shoot’s access tier is prepaid, watermarking is skipped entirely and the customer receives the full-resolution files directly. Use prepaid when the customer has already paid you outside the gallery. See Customer access tiers.

Tips

Update your watermark before a big upload — changing it doesn’t reprocess shoots that were already delivered.
Test with one shoot first to dial in size/opacity you’re happy with.