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Where a logo should sit on a photograph

How big, which corner, how far in from the edge, and why the answer is a fraction of the frame rather than a number of pixels. Written for shop photographs, portfolio shots and signed documents.

Open the placing toolBoth files stay on your device — we only draw one on top of the other.

The frame is the only unit that travels

Every argument in this piece comes back to one thing: you do not know what size your photograph will be when somebody finally looks at it. The same file is a full-width hero on your own site, a 400-pixel square in a marketplace grid, a thumbnail in a message and a print on a table. A mark measured in pixels is correct at exactly one of those sizes and wrong at the rest.

Measured as a fraction of the frame it is the same mark everywhere. That is why the size readout here is a percentage, why the safe margins are a percentage of the short edge rather than a pixel count, and why the logo page opens at eighteen per cent instead of at two hundred pixels.

Five rules, and what each one is protecting

Size it as a fraction, never in pixels. A mark forty pixels wide is a banner across a thumbnail and a smudge on a scan. Ten to twenty per cent of the long edge lands the same on both, which is why the tool reads the size back to you as a percentage of the frame.
Pick the corner the crop is least likely to take. Bottom right, in almost every case. Automatic crops pull towards the centre and towards the top, and photographers put their subject towards the top more often than the bottom.
Leave a margin of about three per cent of the short edge. Flush against the edge reads as an accident and is the first thing a square crop removes. Three per cent is enough to look deliberate and cheap enough to survive.
Give it contrast, not size. A mark that is hard to read is usually fighting the photograph rather than being too small. An outline, a gentle shadow, or Multiply on a pale picture buys legibility without taking up more of the frame.
Pull the opacity back until it stops shouting. Between seventy and ninety per cent is where a credit stops competing with the subject and still reads at a glance. Below about fifty it starts to look like a mistake rather than a choice.

What changes by use

A shop photograph

The mark is doing two jobs — saying whose listing this is, and being invisible enough that a buyer still looks at the product. Fifteen to eighteen per cent of the long edge, bottom right, opacity around eighty, and Multiply if the background is pale enough to allow it. The most common mistake is a mark at forty per cent because it looked right on a phone screen at full width; it will be all anyone sees in the grid.

A portfolio or print shot

Smaller and further in — ten to twelve per cent, and often in the bottom left, because a photographer's own name is a credit rather than a claim and the bottom left reads like a signature on a painting. Full opacity is fine at that size; a mark you have to hunt for is not a credit.

A signature on a document photograph

Different rules entirely, because the position is dictated by the page rather than by design: the signature goes where the line is. Photograph the signature on white paper, cut it out as a transparent PNG, set it on Multiply so the paper drops away, and size it against the width of the signature line rather than against the frame. Turning it a degree or two stops it reading as pasted.

The numbers in one place

Credit on a portfolio shot: 10–12% of the long edge, bottom left or bottom right, full opacity
Mark on a shop photograph: 15–18% of the long edge, bottom right, 75–90% opacity
Signature on a document: Sized to the line, not the frame. Multiply, full opacity, one or two degrees off level
Margin from the edge: 3% of the short edge for anything that will be cropped by software; 5% if it will also be printed
Corner order of safety: Bottom right, then bottom left, then top left. Top right is where most platforms put their own furniture

None of this stops a determined crop. A mark in a corner is one selection box away from gone, and the guides here protect against careless crops rather than deliberate ones.
A mark that has to be hard to remove is a different product. It needs to repeat across the middle of the picture, at which point it is in the way of the person you wanted to see the photograph — and that trade belongs in a tool built around it rather than in this one.