How-To: Adding a Watermark

It was asked the last time I posted some shots how I add the watermark to my images so here's my how-to. I'll try to add the steps I did (if I can remember them all). If you need me to go into more detail let me know. I run mine as an action on the images and have one set up for portrait and one for landscapes as I was too lazy to figure it out for both.

I've done this in Photoshop but I'm sure you can do this in Paint Shop Pro or the Gimp or other photo programs, I have Photoshop so that's what I know.

1. Figure out what size your final shots sizes will be when you're posting them online. Mine are 600px wide for landscape and 400px wide for portrait.

2. Open a new document set to the width you want (you can crop the height down after you figure out what you want your watermark to look like). My watermark is simple text stating the url of the site I still need to build on top of a black background where I dropped the opacity down. Play around until you find something that suits your, your name, the year, your initials etc.

3. Flatten and crop the height down to whatever size you want.

4. Save the file in a location where you won't accidentally delete it. Saving it as a .psd is fine (that's what mine are in).

That should make you your two watermark files for use on your shots. Next getting them into your shots. I have an action to do this but here's the basics steps for doing it manually.

1. Have your picture you want to apply the watermark to open and sized to your final output size.

2. Open the watermark file for the appropriate image.

3. Select all (Ctrl+A / Cmd+A) on the watermark image.

4. Copy (Ctrl+C / Cmd+C) then close the image (the close is in here for when you create your action the image is no longer open)

5. Paste (Ctrl+V / Cmd+V) the watermark onto your image.

6. Move the new layer to where ever you want it to be placed.

7. Merge all visible layers (shft+cmd+e on my mac, not sure what the PC equiv is).

And there you go. That should get a watermark on your image and all the EXIF data preserved as well (preserving the EXIF was what I was going for when making it as I like to have that info available for myself as well as others viewing the shots etc).

To create an action to do this for you you need to have the watermark files created and have one image (it can even just be a test image) open to apply it to. Hit the record button on your action palette and start from Step 2 (opening the watermark file) above. After Step 7 hit the stop button. Repeat for the other watermark file and you're good to go. After you have the actions created instead of going through all the steps you just need to play the action on any image you want and done (it's a pretty simple time saver).

Here's what mine looks like as a reminder:

Just to play devil's advocate I think that these watermarks are good for branding yourself but often if someone wants the picture bad enough they will crop the watermark out. You could put a watermark over an important part of the picture (face, for example) but that's just ugly.

When I am working I ensure that I "sign" my images in the EXIF tags embedded in the file. You never see them unless you know where to look and they record the copyright info, model number of your camera and any other info you put (captions, location, etc). Somebody could also delete that info if they steal your shot but it's not as likely as someone cropping a watermark.

A mix of both is probably your best line of defense and will get your name out there.

I wouldn't say you are playing devil's advocate just stating your opinion and I agree with it.

I started added the marks/branding if you will after I started doing enough gigs and saw people just taking my pictures and putting them up wherever. Not notifying me, asking, giving credit etc. Adding the mark allowed my name to move around more quickly. Yes people can remove it if they want but most people if they are just grabbing the shot are too lazy to (it also depends on what the shot is -- a texture like the one above is easy to crop the name out and still use the shot for how it is etc). I also don't like to "brand" where it ruins the shot as that is tacky.

I do have my name in the EXIF as well for those purposes also. That's why I did the watermark the way I did above, there are other methods but you kill the EXIF when you save. Basically as soon as I import any image onto my computer a default EXIF entry is added into the data with my name and other details.

"Protecting your image" is a whole other topic and like we said each method has it's uses/purposes.

Lately my name has been working for a lot of the band stuff I do especially on Facebook as people are able to find me by seeing my name on the picture -- a lot of average users don't know about EXIF and looking into EXIF to view peoples details.

And wrapping this back to the original reason for this post -- it was requested in another thread and I promised to write it up so here it is.

Yah, I'm not really disputing the use of them. It's great to share your knowledge.