Looking to protect your digital work (aka images, photos, art, etc.)? Then watermark it! And Mass Watermark is a program that allows you to do just that. Let’s see how well it does.

WHAT IS IT AND WHAT DOES IT DO

Main Functionality

Mass Watermark allows you to add text and/or image watermarks to your images. You can add a text watermark, an image watermark, or both… but only one of each. Batch processing is supported so you can add watermarks to multiple images at once.

Pros

• Allows you to add text and/or image watermarks
• Watermark opacity, placement, and rotation is fully in the user’s control
• Supports batch processing
• Supports all five major input image formats: JPG, PNG, GIF, BMP, and TIF
• Input images can be outputted as their original image format or they can all be converted to either JPG, PNG, GIF, BMP, or TIF
• Can upload output images directly to Flickr or Picasa, or directly store output images into a ZIP file
• Has a ‘Watermark Designer’ which can be used to build your own watermark from within the program itself
• Had built-in tools to optimize, resize, rotate, crop input images and modify their metadata

Cons

• You can add both text and image watermark at the same time to the same image, but you can only have one text watermark and one image watermark. Most people probably won’t need more, but for people that want multiple text and/or image watermarks on the same image, Mass Watermark doesn’t allow that. (Unless you run an image through Mass Watermark multiple times, changing the watermarks each time.)
• Rewrites existing files of the same name in the output directory without warning
• Has some arbitrary size limitation on input images
• Not 100% bug free
• Program window cannot be resized (Why oh why can developers not follow industry standards when it comes to program windows?!)

Discussion

When evaluating watermarking programs, there are four very important characteristics I always look at:

• Does it have the ability to add image or text watermarks?
• Does it support batch processing?
• Does it force you to convert all input images to the same output format?
• Does it resize watermarks relative to input image size?

Ideally, the answer to the above questions should be “yes, image and text watermarks are supported”, “yes, batch processing is supported”, “no it does not force you to convert all input images to the same output format”, and “yes, it does resize watermarks relative to input image size”. Any watermark program that has all four of what I just described is a watermark program worth downloading.

So is Mass Watermark worth downloading? The answer to the first three questions for Mass Watermark is:

• Yes, you can add image and/or text watermarks (but only one of each)
• Yes, batch processing is supported
• No, you are not forced to convert all input images to the same output format — you can opt to keep the original format for all images, or you can opt to convert all input images to the same output format

The answer to the last question, however, is a big fat “I don’t know”.

You see I ran into a peculiar issue with Mass Watermark. For some odd reason, it refuses to allow me to input images of small size. The program will perfectly input large(r) images and watermark them, but images of smaller size cannot be added to the program. Why is this? I have no idea. What is the size limitation? I have no idea. All I know is I wanted to test to see if Mass Watermark resizes watermarks relative to input image size. For example, if a watermark is bigger in size than the input image, how does Mass Watermark react. As such, I tried to input various different size images. The larger ones (300×300 or higher, it seems, but I don’t know this for sure) loaded into the program just fine. Smaller images, however, would not load at all.

Of course the question some may ask is why would anyone want to watermark small images. I don’t know why anyone would want to watermark a small image but I’m sure some people will want to… so for the developer to not allow users to watermark all sized images is a huge con.

Since I wasn’t able to load small(er) images into Mass Watermark, I don’t know if the program does indeed resize watermarks relative to image size. It might, or it might not. Until the developer fixes the bug of not allowing users to load small(er) size images, I cannot tell for sure.

Aside from that, Mass Watermark is not 100% bug free. No, it isn’t a glitchy program that crashes all the time. However, I did run into an error a couple of times when outputting images: “Unable to watermark images. An internal error has occurred.” This error was fixed by removing the input images and reloading them, and the error did not happen often. In fact, the program worked as intended most of the time. However, the fact that I received the error multiple times means there is some bug in the program that needs to be addressed.

Update: The developer of Mass Watermark has emailed me and told me the following:

Mass Watermark does not support very small images because there is no need for a watermark on very small images.Also there is intelligent watermark resizing you may check this with different images

The second issue ” Unable to watermark images. An internal error has occurred” happens when you try to output the images to same folder contaning the original images,you need to specify another location.

I have already uninstalled Mass Watermark (and don’t plan on reinstalling it) so I cannot confirm the reason given by the developer is actually why I got the errors. It very well could have been the reason and, if true, the developer needs to modify their program to fix this absurd behavior. Implement something like automatic file renaming because it is plausible that some people will want to output watermarked images to the same folder as their original images.

As for the first comment, the developer did not bother to tell me what exactly constitutes “small images”. That said, it may not be a ‘bug’ but my point is still valid: the developer shouldn’t tell users what images they can or should watermark and what they can’t/shouldn’t.

CONCLUSION AND DOWNLOAD LINK

Mass Watermark comes very close to being an excellent watermark program, but the bugs and other issues I mention above knock the program down a notch to simply being good. That said, Mass Watermark is a relatively new program so the developer has plenty of time to iron out the issues and come back with a bang; keep an eye on this one, it is a winner in the making.

So, then, what is my recommendation? I do not recommend paying $30 to buy Mass Watermark just yet. Wait until the program matures a bit more… then maybe consider purchasing it, if you need or want it. Alternatively, if you don’t want to pay for a watermark program or while you wait for Mass Watermark to fix the kinks, there are some fairly good freeware watermarking tools you can use — such as TSR Watermark Image or Image Tuner. Read our article on 7 free watermark programs to learn more about these two freewares and others

Price: $30

Version reviewed: v1.0.1

Supported OS: Windows XP/Vista/Win7/Win8

Download size: 17.2 MB

VirusTotal malware scan results: 1/45

Is it portable? No

Mass Watermark homepage