Why does my white watermark disappear on product photos with a light background?

What is actually happening

The tool's default text color is white and the default opacity is 60%. On a black abaya or a dark wooden table that looks great. But a lot of shop photos are shot on white or pale grey, and there a half transparent white line simply melts into the background. If you set Legibility to 'None', nothing at all separates the letters from what is behind them.

The outline and shadow pick their own color

When you turn on the outline or the shadow, you do not choose its color. The tool measures how light your text color is: a light text gets a black outline or shadow, a dark text gets a white one. So one setting works on a bright photo and a dark photo alike, without changing anything between images.

Outline, shadow or another color?

• The outline is the clearest on white backgrounds, because it draws a continuous line around every letter. It is also the tool's default.
• The shadow is softer and suits a quieter mark, but it holds up slightly less well on pure white.
• Switching the text to a dark color fixes light photos but moves the problem to dark ones. If the whole batch is shot on white, it is a good option.
• Raising the opacity towards 80% helps too, at the cost of a heavier mark over the product.

How to do it

1. Open the Image watermark editor tool and pick every photo in the batch, light and dark.
2. Type your text, keep the color white, and choose 'Outline' under Legibility.
3. Press 'Preview' on the lightest photo in the list and then on the darkest, and make sure the mark reads on both.
4. Download them one by one or all together as a ZIP.

One last habit: do not judge legibility from a single photo. The preview shows only the selected image, while the whole batch is processed with the same settings, so click through several before you download.