15-Minute Reviews :: uMark Professional v1.3

Hello all and welcome to another 15-Minute Review! Today’s application is uMark Professional version 1.3 by Uconomix Technologies – An application to place watermarks on your images.

Software Description

As Giveaway of the Day states:

“Protect your digital photos with uMark. uMark is a powerful batch watermarking software. It enables you to add visible watermarks to your digital images and photos. Be it your company name, logo or a copyright notice; uMark can add all!

You can fully customize the placement of your watermark, set a custom font, size, color and transparency. You can also rotate and tile the watermark. uMark can also generate thumbnails and batch convert images.”

Quick Pros

• Interface isn’t pretty but does what it is supposed to
• Lots of options for image and text watermarking
• Can save presets for text and images
• Ability to rename files & resize images
• Speed is fairly quick and quality of watermark is acceptable
• Context menu for adding files

Quick Cons

• No drag and drop support
• No font or image auto-size
• Text could have option to create a copyright date from the file
• Could have been preset options for rename/resize as well
• Loading via context menu does not offer sub-directory support and is slower than ‘Add…’

Expansion

While I don’t often have the use for watermarking, there is an occasional time I want to release a personal photo online for one reason or another. Usually I break out the graphic editors, but if I were to do a large number of photos I would break out an application like this for speed and simplicity.

Upon first launching, you’re greeted by a ‘Tips’ box which you can go through the tips or stop from appearing upon launch. Under that tips box, there is the main window. The interface is clearly dated, though functional. On the left is a window in which the files you select go, and on the right is an image previewer. There is no drag and drop support here, so you either have to use the “Add…” button or use the contextual menu in the file explorer to add files. Once you’ve added files, three tabs appear to the right of the Source Images tab. Text, Logo/Image and Options can be directly accessed or the Next >> button can be used instead to advance.

The Text and Logo/Image tabs are roughly the same, offering the same general settings with a few settings pertaining to each tab. There are quite a few options here, from preset positions which land the image or text at one of 9 positions (4 corners, 4 edges and center). There is also the option for custom position as well which is pixel-based (Which may not be great for if you have varying-sized images). There is also a rotate option, which allows you to add a rotation (Including putting text vertical) to your text and images. This may be handy for adding a bit of flair. Horizontal and vertical tiling is available to cover the entire image with an image or text; Useful for those high-risk images of theft. There is the ability to save your settings for either text or logo/image as a preset as well through the Settings menu; Handy if you have a common setup you’d like to use and quickly load instead of redoing the settings each and every time. The biggest option that I wish was here was dynamic positioning and sizing, which you could set the text or image size based on the size of the actual image, and not a set text size or worse the actual watermark image size for logo/image. Another handy feature I’d like to see is the ability to insert the copyright year/date automatically as a macro into the text based on the creation date of the image file.

On the Options tab is the settings for output location and output format as well as renaming and resizing the images. The renaming function has some macros for making the name based on the original name, a new numbering system and the current date; This would be handy for uploading a well-named (SEO) fileset as well. There is also the resizing functionality, which would be handy for a website or other distribution methods. I wonder why there wasn’t a preset option like for the text and watermark tabs for renaming and resizing; It would have been the logical step.

I found the process ran fairly quick of watermarking/resizing/renaming. A few seconds to do 30 images is not a bad speed; Granted, if you were to get into a collection of hundreds or thousands this may become a pain, but for the most part I can’t see it becoming too big of a grief at the speed it is for common-sized batches.

As mentioned above, this application offers contextual menu in the file explorer (in exchange of no drag-and-drop functionality). The feature is pretty handy for getting images in, but it only works on images; You can not select a directory and have the application spider through the subdirectories. I also found the process of adding a group of images through the context option slower than the Add.. button; It seems it loads each file one at a time and briefly shows the preview for each file, as opposed to the Add… button just showing the preview of the first file and then zipping through the rest to add it to the list.

Final Verdict

While this application doesn’t have a great look to it, the application does function as noted. It could use a lot more features however and be more powerful. That said, if you’re looking for a watermarking application, this as a freebie might be a great choice for you. As for paying $19.99 for this title, I likely would not purchase this title; I just need more features, especially for my workplace. It may be a deal for some at the price point of $19.99 though, but keep in mind there are a lot of options out there for watermarking applications.

Posted by BladedThoth on Friday, August 31, 2007