Protect your iPhone photos with PhotoMarkr
Above: Don’t even TRY to take credit for this beautiful shot!
If you’re anything like me, you are sick and tired of people taking your iPhone snapshots of cheeseballs and posting them to the web as their own. If only there were some way to add a watermark to your photos while still in the iPhone…
Well, there is. PhotoMarkr (99¢ on iTunes) is a new iPhone app that allows you to easily add custom watermarks to your photos directly from the iPhone.
PhotoMarkr’s intuitive interface allows you to type any text message or choose any image (logo) from your iPhone’s library to use as a watermark. Logos need to be white on black, as seen below, and need to be in your iPhone’s library.
Above: Only the white parts of your logo will be used.
Photos can either be taken directly from the app, or grabbed from your iPhone’s library. Once you have entered your text and/or logo picture, you can then place, scale, and rotate them any way you wish. You do this via the iPhone’s traditional two-finger pinch and stretch motion you are used to using with photos on the iPhone. In general I found placement and scaling very easy, although it might have been nice if the text and images “snapped” at certain rotational angles, like 90 or 180 degrees, to make placing straight text a little easier. [EDIT: Apparently there is a snapping feature when you get within 15 degrees. I guess it was subtle enough that I missed it]
Once you have the marks where you’d like, you can then adjust the level of transparency.
When you have the watermarks looking the way you’d like, hit the save icon to save the photo back to your iPhone’s camera roll.
Issues
My only qualm with the app is a minor one, in that the transparency slider affects both the text and logo image equally. While most times this is not a big problem, occasionally depending on your image, there are times you need to make the text more readable/opaque than your logo image.
Above: Let’s see someone try to take credit for this shot now!
Conclusion
The iPhone’s camera is obviously not a professional photographer’s number one go to tool, but that doesn’t mean you don’t need to protect your work. For bloggers and photographer’s looking to easily put a watermark on their iPhone images while on the go, PhotoMarkrworks well, and is an excellent choice.
Price: 99¢ on iTunes
Pros: Choice of text, image, or “both” watermarks, easy to use, cheap
Cons: No individual transparency for text and images
those are my cheeseballs!!!!!!!!!!! nice app Doc hope to see more cheesy pictures from your iphone.
Well, in theory, you could put the text and the watermark in 2 distinct steps to get different transparency, but I agree that while doable, it would be pretty cumbersome.
These types of apps bother me, because it only does one thing. These apps are endlessly cluttering up my iPhone! Instead of Photoshop for the iPhone, we get one app for every little Photoshop function. Enough already, I say. Enough!
Hey all, I’m the developer of PhotoMarkr. Dr. Mac – thanks for the great review! That is a wicked watermark, btw.
Just a quick clarification – the watermark actually *does* snap to vertical/horizontal. You just need to be within about 15 degrees.
Separate transparency adjustment for the text/image is a great idea!
@Alex – also a great idea. I’ll write PhotoShop for iPhone as my next quick project 😉
If anyone else has any suggestions, questions, etc – please do let me know. I want this to be a great app for you.
Thanks,
Natalia
http://twitter.com/nattylux
I am the rights holder for “Cheese Balls” ™ and I order you to cease your blatant theft of our imaginary property.
kthnxbai
That kid really loves his cheese 🙂