How to Watermark your pictures.

I wrote this small article on request from one of our forum members. Personally I never used watermarking, mainly because I never really though about doing so.

People copying pictures from the web is common today. Personally I do not have a strong stand on whether people copy a picture of mine or not. I do feel strong on written content because I know how much work it takes to write and prepare articles.

I think its good to watermark your pictures and if possible my advice would be to use a web your address as your watermark, the benefits speaks for itself.

Step 1

Create a new file with the dimensions as in the picture to the left. You can name the file, Watermark. Click OK.

The top block in the color swatch should turn gray. To apply that gray color to your newly created Watermark file press Alt and Backspace together.

Set the foreground color back to black. To change the foreground color back to black press D on your keyboard.

Step 2

Step 3

Step 4

Step 5

Step 6

Step 7

The reason for the text to be a mid gray color is that mid gray will be shown as transparent when to layers are combined.

That you can see in the final logo.

One can also copy the logo as a brush and then its possible to use the brush tool whenever you like to use the copyright logo.

The background layer or the file you created in step 1 will now have a gray color and the color swatch will be black and white like in the picture above.

Press T on your keyboard to select the Text tool or click on the text tool symbol in the toolbox. In the Text Options Bar on the top select the text to be in the center option. I selected the text type as Arial.

Click on the gray area of the Watermark file and then hold down the Alt key and press 0, then 1, then 6 and last 9. This will create the copyright logo on your work area. Press enter to go to the next line and type in your copyright details, I selected “Photography is Fun”.

Next, click with your mouse on the copyright logo and select it. In the Text Options Bar type in a size of 200. For the text below select a size of 50.

Your layers pallet should look like the picture on the left.

Next step is to turn the Watermark layer off. Click on the “eye” next to the layer to turn the layer off. The gray color will now disappear from the picture and only the writing will be displayed against a transparent background.

Next will be to select the Emboss effect from the Effects pallet. The procedure for finding the emboss style between Elements 6 and Elements 5 is different. I pointed to the Emboss style button in the picture to the left, in version 6 that is what the screen will look like. In version 5 you need to go to the top of the window and select Special Effects button. In the drop down menu select filters and then select stylize. Now you will see the same button as in the picture to the left.

Make sure the Text layer is selected. To do that click on the layer that says “Photography is Fun”. Double click on the Emboss button to apply it to your text layer. 

When you double licked on the Emboss button, first a warning sign will be shown asking if you want to simplify the layer, click OK. Next the window on the left will be shown.

The emboss function is used to smooth the edges in the text layer. The reason is because Elements does not work in vector mode.Type in the following values:

Angle - 135
Height - 3
Amount - 100   and  Hit OK

Make sure the text layer is selected and select “Hard Light” blending mode. (See the drop down box at the top of the layers pallet to select a new blending mode, you will see “Normal” written in the drop down box before selecting Hard Light)

The next step is to further smooth the edges by applying a Gaussian Blur filter. Again with the text layer selected, go to filter in the menu Bar, select Blur, then Gaussian Blur and enter a radius of 0,7 and hit the OK button.

Your watermark should look something like this now. The final step is to delete the bottom gray layer and to save your watermark as a master.

To delete the Watermark layer, click on the layer and drag it to the waste bin on the top of the layers pallet.

You will now only see the writing against a transparent background.

Next step is to crop your copyright logo and to save it as a Gif file. To do that, from the file menu select “Save for Web” Make sure to select file type is Gif and select a width you think is OK for you.

The reason for saving as Gif is because the Gif format will keep the background transparent.

When the Watermark(Gray) layer is deleted and the logo is cropped it will look something like this.

In the next step we will show how to apply the copyright logo to a picture.

To apply your copyright logo, both the logo and the picture should be displayed in the editing window. From the Menu Bar, select the Window menu, then images and then select Tile. That will show the pictures like in the picture to the left.

All that’s left now is to select the Select tool from the Toolbar in the left or to press V on your keyboard to select the Select Tool.

Place your mouse on the copyright logo and drag it onto the picture. Next you can close the copyright picture and you can maximize the picture that has the copyright logo on it now. Now you can resize the logo by dragging on the corners plus you can place the logo where you think its best

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