How To Make A Watermark For Photos

Watermarks are a great way to stamp your photos with your name and identity to reduce image theft. However, they can be distracting as well. In this tutorial I will discuss clasy watermarks as well as ways you can save your images for th web to reduce image theft.

[vickie]

Very useful info. I'd just learned from another artist to place a watermark directly over the focal point of the art to keep it from being stolen, because the watermark placed elsewhere could be simply cropped out. However, the resizing method for internet sharing answers to that issue very effectively! Thank you for sharing!

[fAcademy]

That is very true, you could make a brush out of it for the ease of access. The only thing that you may have difficulty with as a brush is the ability to change the layer style settings. It would be a quick stamp on the photo which may be all you need. Adding new styles to the brush does not translate as well.

I like the ability to change the layer styles based on the photo at hand. There is a lot of functionality with the saved .psd file as opposed to the brush route. Great point though!

[jonannejones]

learned alot re watermarks with your video.  for a new photographer would you recommend me starting out in Photoshop CS6? or something else?  Thanks 

[susanaf.]

Thank you so much Blake for your advise and tutorial. I will work on adding my logo to my photos. 

[fAcademy]

Very true, JPEG is destructive in nature, and you should watermark it first before putting the JPEG on. However, for those who may want to use that watermark on older-already saved JPEGS, the saving of it once again as a JPEG will not be that noticeable of image quality loss.

You have to save a JPEG a lot of times as a JPEG to be able to see noticeable quality loss, much more than 2! But a very good point indeed!

[timsavvy]

Very good Photoshop tutorial.  Especially teaching them to be conscious about the file size.  So many people are not aware about the 72 ppi resolution nowadays.   I used to do this painstaking method and usually give up copy => paste => adjust per photo until I had to do batch watermarking.  I Googled "Batch Watermark" and first link that's not an ad is Visual Watermark.  I downloaded the free app then eventually paid like $20-$30 to support the developer.  It saves me tons of time producing the same, if not better results.  Now I can watermark hundreds of images at the quality I like at a fraction of the time!
Thumbs up this post if you find this useful too! :)
HTH! :)

[riddhibhadekar]

what software are you using to make the watermark?

[simoncarlton]

Fantastic, thank you.  I've been looking for years for something like this.  I also wanted to design one to use in batch exporting in Lightroom.  With this I can do it, I saved one version as a PNG and it works a dream.  Again thanks. :)

[liteboholikhojana]

Which version of Photoshop are you using?

[Taylormadevisuals]

Well some photographers need to watermark across the face of the photo because they are trying to sale those photos. I actually don't watermark on personal portfolio photos though like he said it takes away from the image.

[MarkSoekarjo]

Jpg is a destructive format. If you resave a jpg the quality goes down unnecessarily. Better put your watermark into the psd and jpgify just once as the last step in your process.

[NightOwl]

Why not make the watermark a brush so you can just paint it into the photo?

[chazM]

NO point in changing the DPI for screen you only need what pixels you want Only for outputting to print do PPI have any effect on the size of the image.

[tonycna]

The topic was How to add a watermark. Not your opinions on watermarks