hello i'm Robin Whalley welcome to lenscraft
today i'm looking at how to watermark photos using photoshop
this is something that comes in regularly as an email request
so i thought it was time for a video i'm going to start by showing you how to
create a simple watermark which you can apply to photos using text and graphics
then later in the video i'll explain how to automate this to add watermarks to
batches of images i'll start by using an image to help me
create the watermark that i want to apply in photoshop
now i can add a new empty layer using the photoshop layers menu
and i'll call the new layer watermark you can see the new layer at the top of
the layers window for the watermark i'll add my text first
by selecting the type tool in the photoshop tools palette
i'll then pick a suitable font to use in this example
arial black and i'll set the text colour to white
i'll then enter my text to use for the watermark
i can use the properties window to control the size of the font
i can also move the text into position on the image
using the photoshop move tool the text doesn't look much like a watermark at
the moment because you can't see the image through it
but before i show you how to fix that i'll add a graphic into the logo so you
can see how that's done i've already got my
logo open as a separate image in photoshop
using the photoshop move tool i'm going to select the image layer
in the layers window and drag and drop it onto the image that i want to
watermark you can see this creates a new layer in
the layers window
now that i've got my watermark in place i'll merge the two layers together in
photoshop i'll do this by clicking the top layer
holding down my shift key and clicking the other layer this
selects both of the layers that i want to merge
i can then merge the layers using the photoshop layers menu
and selecting merge layers alternatively i can use the shortcut keys command + e
or that's ctrl + e if you're using a
windows pc because i've merged the two layers into
one i just need to rename the merge layer again
now i can deal with the transparency of the watermark by reducing the opacity to
40 the other thing i'll do is just add a
drop shadow effect to the layer by clicking the effects icon
once i'm happy with the design of my watermark i'll delete the background
layer so that i've only got the watermark
i'll then save this as my watermark file using photoshop psd file format
because this is a psd file it can hold multiple layers
so i could use it to hold multiple different versions of my watermarks
to add my watermark to an image all i need to do is open the image i want to
watermark and copy the watermark layer onto it
let's take things a little bit further by automating this using the photoshop
actions i'll open my actions window and then
i can create a new action called watermarking
i'm going to record each of the steps i want the macro to perform
starting by opening an image to watermark
then i'll select the watermark i want to use and copy it
i'll select the new image where i can paste it
finally i'll save the image as a new version adding the word
watermarked into the name i can then stop recording the action now
i can play the action back to watermark individual images very quickly
but i can also use this action to quickly batch process
large volumes of images to do this i'll use the batch automate option in the
photoshop file menu
there i can pick the watermarking action that i created
then i'll select the source folder containing the images that i want to
process i'll then set up the options to control
how the images are opened for processing here i want to override the open command
to hide the open dialog i don't want to include any of the
subfolders because i'm going to create a subfolder where i'll save
the watermarked images too and this could risk getting other images
in the processing i'm also going to hide the file open
options and any color profile warnings this ensures the macro won't pause and
wait for me to respond if photoshop would normally display a dialog i can
then choose the destination folder where i want to save the processed images to
i'll then select the option to hide the save as dialog
and i'll define the new file name to use when saving the image i'll do this by
appending the word watermark to the existing
image name when i click the ok button photoshop processes
all the images in the chosen folder and saves them to the new location
if i open this folder you can see all the new images
and if i open these images in photoshop you can see that they now have a
watermark
the only thing you may want to do is move and resize the watermarks
if you want some further ideas about creating your own watermarks there's a
tutorial on my website i'll put a link to it in the youtube
video description i hope you found this video helpful if
you have please take a moment to share it with others
i'm Robin Whalley you've been watching lenscraft i'll see you next week for
another video