The web has become an invaluable resource for sharing ideas, information and innovations, with images fuelling many of its more exciting aspects. However, if you have created an image which you want to share, you run the risk of having it endlessly replicated and reproduced without getting any recognition for your hard work. This is where uMark Lite 2.0 comes into play, giving you the ability to add watermarks to any picture which will make it much harder for those who share/borrow/steal it to avoid citing you as the source.
It is important to recognise that uMark Lite is not on the top rung when it comes to adding watermarks to images, as there are plenty of other options on the market that are a little easier to use and a little more flexible. However, this is a program that is free to download and use, which must count for something in this market.
uMark Lite possesses a simple interface which is not blessed with a wealth of options but does make it relatively easy to boot up and use without any prior experience of the software. It would have been nice to see a help file included to aid those who are not confident enough to use the program in a trial-and-error fashion, but hopefully the look and feel should make its operation self-explanatory enough for most people.
The uMark Lite interface is based on a small selection of text entry fields and check boxes, which allow you to control the type of watermark which is applied to your selected image. You can add text, insert a logo and alter the various properties of your chosen watermark. Size, opacity, placement, rotation and even shadow can be modified to give you a bespoke, recognisable stamp that identifies your work exclusively. You can watermark a single image at a time but if you have many to carry out at once you can queue up to 50 in a row for convenience. The problem with doing this is that uMark Lite does not seem to be particularly well optimised with the process of watermarking taking considerably longer than you might have expected. You can get on with other tasks while it operates, but what should be a speedy process is less than perfectly executed by this particular program.
The software does allow you to preview watermarks before they are applied, but sadly this is also imperfect, with size slightly skewed to be larger than it will be on the finished product. This is a minor fault and one which you can adjust to once you recognise its peculiarities. When you download uMark Lite and install it there will automatically be a desktop icon added to boot it up, which might be a minor annoyance to some. Uninstalling will leave traces of its presence in the form of an errant folder, so a little clearing up might be required if you are particularly fastidious about your PC.
Overall, this is a perfectly acceptable program which you can forgive for its faults when you are enjoying its benefits free of charge and protecting your intellectual property online.