Watermark Protection

Which image file the visitor gets

Watermark protection stamps your logo onto copies of your photos, and the gallery hands those out. Your uploads stay as they are. The copies sit under wp-content/uploads/visual-portfolio-pro/watermarks/ with hashed file names, so the address of a stamped file gives away nothing about the original. Turn the option on and the grid image, its srcset entries, the lightbox image, album images and the URL click action all point at the copy.

Three more options share the Protection panel. The nearest one to this is right-click protection, which blocks the context menu and image dragging. Screenshots, developer tools and a pasted image URL walk past it, and the setting says so in the editor. A watermark survives all three, because it lives in the pixels rather than in the page. Pick it when the file itself has to carry your name off the site.

Formats, sizes and where copies live

The Watermarks settings tab holds one logo for the whole site. Every gallery with the switch on uses it.

• The logo can be a PNG with transparency, a JPEG, a GIF or a WebP file. Nine positions, Bottom Right by default.
• Size is 1 to 100 percent of the image width, default 30. Opacity is 1 to 100 percent, default 50.
• JPEG, PNG, GIF and WebP originals get stamped. SVG, AVIF and BMP are skipped, and the gallery shows the uploaded file for those.
• Every registered size gets its own copy, full size and all thumbnails, so a phone cannot pull a clean file out of srcset.
• Autogenerate is on by default. New uploads are stamped as soon as WordPress finishes their sizes, and changing the logo, position, size or opacity queues the whole library again through WP-Cron.
• A copy is used only when it matches the current settings and all its sizes are ready. Until then the visitor sees the original, with no warning on the page.
• Generation needs the GD and Fileinfo PHP extensions. The settings tab names the one your server is missing.

Stamping your images in three steps

1. Open Visual Portfolio → Settings → Watermarks, add the logo image, pick its position, then set Size and Opacity. The preview redraws on a real photo as you change them.
2. Click Bulk Generate Watermarks for everything already in the Media Library. It runs from the browser tab, so leave that tab open until the status line reads All images watermarked.
3. Edit the gallery, open the Protection panel and switch on Add Watermarks to Photos. A Saved Layout carries the setting to every page it appears on.

Watermarks are Pro only

The free plugin builds the same gallery and serves the files you uploaded. Stamping arrives with Visual Portfolio Pro, which already contains the free plugin, so there is one plugin to install either way. The free versus Pro table lists the split feature by feature, and the pricing page covers the licenses.

• Four protections share one panel in Pro: watermarks, a password, an age gate and right-click blocking. They can run together on one gallery.
• Free covers the layouts, skins, lightbox, AJAX filtering and pagination, plus the Images and Posts content sources.
• Proofing galleries are created with the watermark switch already on.
• Social feed images are never watermarked, and the Protection panel is hidden for the Social content source.

Questions about watermarked images

Are my original images changed by watermarks?

No. The stamp goes on a separate copy, served only in galleries that have Add Watermarks to Photos on. Switch that option off and the gallery is back on the originals immediately. To clear the copies, use Remove in the Watermark box on one attachment, or Remove Watermark in the settings tab to stop generating them. The answer in the docs names the folder they live in.

Are WebP and AVIF images watermarked?

WebP yes, AVIF no. Copies are generated for JPEG, PNG, GIF and WebP originals, and the WebP files LiteSpeed Cache produces during image optimization are stamped too. AVIF and SVG images appear in the gallery exactly as uploaded. The FAQ on WebP and AVIF support covers how the conversion plugins fit in.

Why does the gallery still show my original images?

Because no copy matches the settings in force. Generation may still be running, Autogenerate may have been off at upload time, the settings may have changed since, or the server may be missing GD or Fileinfo. Read the status line on the Watermarks tab, which counts the copies made so far, then click Bulk Generate. The troubleshooting page walks through each cause.