Uconomix uMark Lite is a free watermarking application that can be used for personal and commercial use. There is also a professional version that offers a greater range of features, but uMark Lite will cover the watermarking software requirements of many users.
Watermarking software is generally used by photographers, though anyone with any types of images that they wish to protect can benefit from such applications. This kind of software places semi-transparent text and/or graphics on top of a photo so that the image can be previewed, but cannot be reused without the identifying watermark being apparent. This can help image owners to protect their copyright.
Highlights of uMark Lite
Uconomix uMark Lite is fairly simple and focused watermarking software, but offers a number of features.
- Add text or graphics
- Apply different levels of opacity
- Select text color and add drop shadow if desired
- Use different fonts and sizes
- Apply watermark to up to 50 images in one go
- Select from nine different positioning options
Why Use uMark Lite
As said, uMark Lite is a pretty focused application designed to undertake the task of applying a watermark to different image types. It is possible to use pixel-based image editors, such as GIMP and Adobe Photoshop for this task. However using relatively lightweight and specialized watermarking software like uMark Lite is a very convenient way to protect your images.
Once watermarking software has been used to apply a watermark to an image, it becomes more difficult for someone else to reuse an image without it being apparent that they do not own it. While watermarks are not fool proof, because more advanced image editor users may be able to remove them in many cases, they do make stealing images more difficult and impossible for less advanced users.
Some Limitations of uMark Lite
As a free version of a commercial application, uMark Lite does have some inbuilt limitations compared to the Professional version of the watermarking software. These primarily restrict the options for placement of watermarks, including no option for rotating them or having multi-line text. The software also adds small text saying 'uMark Lite' to each image along with the watermark.
Such restrictions don't have any great effect on the usability of the software, but one limitation that may be significant to some users is that uMark Lite does not preserve EXIF information in images. This does mean that embedded image owner and copyright information may be stripped as a result of applying a watermark, though it should be noted that this does not happen with the Professional version.
One other minor issue is that the software doesn't offer a preview using your own images which can make the process a little hit and miss at times.
Help and Support
The user interface of uMark Lite is very simple and doesn't include any Help options. Most users will have no trouble using this watermarking software, however the Uconomix website does have a Support page that offers contact information. There is also an FAQs page, but this mainly covers issues with the Professional version of the software.
You can download a free copy of uMark Lite from the Uconomix website.