TSR Watermark Image vs iLoveIMG
iLoveIMG is one of the most visible image tools on the web, and deservedly so — it's fast, free to start, and it does about thirty different jobs. Watermarking is one of them.
That's the whole comparison, really. Ours does one job.
Your files go to their servers
This is the plain, uncontroversial difference, and it's worth being precise about it because some browser tools genuinely do process locally. iLoveIMG isn't one of them: you upload your images — from your machine, or from Google Drive or Dropbox — they're processed on their infrastructure, and you download the results.
That's not a scandal. It's how the tool is built, they're upfront about the workflow, and for a screenshot you're about to post publicly anyway it makes no difference at all.
It makes a difference when the images are:
- client work you haven't delivered yet, or anything under NDA
- property interiors — the inside of someone's home, with their belongings in it
- photographs of children, yours or anyone else's
- anything where you're the data processor and a client's contract says where their files may be stored
- medical, legal or evidentiary images
For that work, the safe rule isn't "read the privacy policy carefully". It's "don't upload it". TSR Watermark Image runs on your machine, with the network cable out if you like, and the question never comes up.
Depth versus breadth
iLoveIMG's watermark tool gives you text or a logo, position, opacity, rotation, a font picker and a batch. That covers the common case well.
Here's what a tool built solely for watermarking adds:
3D and embossed watermarks. Text or an image chiselled or raised into the photograph rather than laid on top of it, using the source image as a depth map. Much harder to remove cleanly, and it doesn't look like a sticker.
Metadata that survives. All paid editions preserve EXIF, XMP and IPTC. Your copyright notice, creator field and contact details are stored inside the file, and a tool that re-encodes without carrying them across throws away the machine-readable half of your copyright claim. Share editions and above also keep GPS, ID3 and several hundred further tag groups.
Dynamic text. Insert EXIF values, file information, or an incrementing serial number into the watermark text itself. One customer numbered a full product catalogue this way in a single pass.
Real tiling. Horizontal, vertical or both, at any angle, sized as a percentage of the output — the pattern that actually resists cropping.
Multiple watermarks per image, each positioned independently. A logo bottom-right, a copyright line along the base, a tiled pattern behind both.
Multipage TIF, read and written page by page.
Publishing. Straight to WordPress, FTP or secure FTP when the batch completes.
Automation. WatermarkImage.exe "C:\configs\job.wmi" runs a saved profile and exits. Schedule it, or call it from whatever script already moves your files.
Volume
Browser tools are bounded by the tab they run in and the connection they upload over. A thousand full-resolution TIFs is not a pleasant afternoon.
TSR Watermark Image has no batch limit on paid editions. One customer processed over 8,000 TIF files in a single run. There's no upload, so throughput is your disk, not your broadband.
The price comparison people forget
iLoveIMG is free to a point, then it's a subscription. Ours is $29.95, once, and the licence covers every computer you personally use — desktop, laptop, the machine in the studio.
Two years of almost any image-tool subscription costs more than our top edition. If watermarking is a recurring part of your work, run that arithmetic before you sign up for anything monthly.
Where iLoveIMG wins
It's free for occasional use, there's nothing to install, and it works on any device including a phone or a locked-down work laptop. And if you also need to compress, convert, crop, rotate and resize, having all of it behind one login is genuinely convenient.
If you watermark a few images now and then and they're images you were about to publish publicly anyway — use iLoveIMG. It's good, and you don't need to buy anything.
The short version
| TSR Watermark Image | iLoveIMG | |
|---|---|---|
| Where it runs | Your PC, offline | Their servers |
| Files uploaded | Never | Yes |
| Batch limit | None (paid) | Bounded by upload and plan |
| 3D / embossed watermarks | Yes | No |
| Keeps EXIF/XMP/IPTC | Yes | Check before relying on it |
| Dynamic text (EXIF, serial) | Yes | No |
| Publish to WordPress/FTP | Yes | No |
| Scriptable | Yes | No |
| Pricing | $29.95 once, all your machines | Free tier, then subscription |
| Other image tools | No | ~30 of them |
Download the free version → · 90-day money-back guarantee
iLoveIMG details checked August 2026 against iloveimg.com.