How to Add Your Shop Name to Photos — No Typing Required

There are three ways to add your shop name to photos: add text afterwards in an editing app, attach location data (a geotag), or stamp it into the image at the moment of capture.

Only the third survives being posted to social media. Here’s why, and where each one fits.

The photo travels; the caption doesn’t

Your post carries your name and handle. But the photo can be screenshotted and pulled away from the post — forwarded in a messaging app, reposted to an aggregator account.

When that happens, if the name isn’t in the photo itself, there’s no way to tell which shop it came from.

This kind of off-platform sharing is known as dark social, and it can’t be traced from the posting side. If the name is part of the image, the attribution travels with it.

Method 1: Add text in an editing app

Canva, Phonto, or the markup tools in the iOS Photos app let you add text after shooting.

Good for

• When the design matters
• One-off announcements, where the volume is small

Not good for

• Daily posting. Every photo needs its text positioned and sized by hand

Method 2: Attach location data (geotags)

Your phone’s camera writes GPS coordinates into the photo’s metadata (EXIF). Once enabled, it costs you nothing.

But most platforms strip it on upload. Major social networks remove EXIF location data for privacy reasons. Download a posted photo and the location is no longer there.

There’s a second issue: EXIF is invisible. To find the location, a viewer has to deliberately open the file’s details.

Good for

• Keeping a record of where you shot, for yourself

Not good for

• Anything you post publicly

Method 3: Stamp it into the image

The shop or place name is drawn into the pixels. The text becomes part of the photograph.

Upsides

• Survives screenshots, re-saves, and forwarding
• Survives platform compression
• Visible at a glance — no need to inspect anything

Downside

• You can’t remove the text later

For attribution, “can’t be removed” is the point. Keep the original separately and you still have a clean version.

Making it automatic

The friction in Method 3 is doing it for every photo. That goes away if the text is added as you shoot:

1. The camera reads your GPS position at capture
2. It resolves that position into a place name
3. It draws the name and date into the image as it saves

Your only action is pressing the shutter.

What to include

Shop name Wherever the photo ends up, the shop is identifiable. The most important one.

City or district Useful when several shops share a name, or when you’re posting for people unfamiliar with the area.

Capture date For new items and seasonal announcements, it tells people how current the photo is — and stops old photos circulating as new.

Logo Recognised faster than text, and gives your posts visual consistency. It takes up more of the frame, so keep it small enough to stay out of the subject’s way.

Common concerns

The text covers the food

Keep it in a corner, small. Semi-transparent text is an option, but it can become hard to read after a screenshot or compression. Small and clearly legible is the safer choice.

Won’t it look like an advert?

Your name alone is a signature — the same as a photographer signing their work. Without a call to action, it doesn’t read as pushy.

I want to keep the original too

Pick a tool that saves the unstamped version separately. Keeping a clean copy leaves your options open.

Can I stamp hashtags into the photo?

Better not to. A hashtag drawn into an image isn’t tappable. Only hashtags in your post text work as tags, so copying them at share time is the practical approach.

If you want a link in the image, a QR code works — phone cameras read it.

How KIOKUN works

KIOKUN is an iOS app that stamps the place name and date into your photo as you shoot.

Shooting

• Press the shutter and it resolves the place name from GPS and draws it into the image
• Four display formats: Spot (your shop) / City / Spot + City / City + Coords
• A clean copy without text is also saved to your camera roll (on by default; you can turn it off)
• You can also edit photos from your camera roll. If the photo still has location data, it’s used; if not, you type the place name in

Editing

• Drag to reposition the text; resize with the slider or a two-finger pinch
• Three fonts on the free tier, with more available on Pro

Pro features

• Shop logo, copyright line, watermark, and QR codes
• Set these at kiokun.app/console — open it in a browser and enter the six-digit code shown in the app — and they apply to devices signed in with the same account. If your staff use separate accounts, each account needs its own setup

Sharing

• At share time, hashtags built from the place name are copied to your clipboard. They are never stamped into the photo
• Pro adds a fixed set of hashtags and a URL

How your data is handled

• Your photos are never sent to our servers. All image processing happens on your device
• That said, resolving a place name does send the capture coordinates through our servers, and the result is cached for a limited period

For business use, see our team and business page.