We all love to show our astrophotography images to people, especially in a community of other astronomers who will appreciate what they are seeing. Although Astronomer Hub does not use your images for anything other than displaying them on our website, your photos can be downloaded and used by community members. Making sure everybody knows who took the photo is why it is a good idea to have your name on the image. Adding your name to a photo is called watermarking.
When you watermark a photo you place a brand on it to show who the author is. If the photo is shared it will have your name on it and people will know who the photographer was. Although Astronomers Hub will remove your images on request, we can not stop people from downloading them and we recommend you watermark all your astrophotography images.
How to Watermark An Image
Watermarking an image is simply placing your name on the image. You can make it look nice and present it the way you wish. The main thing to ensure is your name is easily visible in the image that you will upload.
A good tip for people who are familiar with how to use a photo editor like gimp, paint.net or Photoshop is to create a template with a layer that contains your watermark in it. Copy and paste your images to another layer behind that. Doing this will also keep your files a consistent size. You can change the image size to match the photo as long as your watermark looks the same on all images so it becomes your brand.
Put This Idea Into Action
Now you know how to watermark your images, start doing it. There are places you can share your images on Astronomers Hub including the deep sky images forum and the planetary images forum. Watermark your images and show people your wonderful captures in those forums.
Here is a video that will help you understand the concept. You can make the watermark text anything you like and we suggest using your signature in the bottom right of the image.