With so many of us posting pictures online - whether we're blogging with vacation photos, sharing pictures of our children with family members, or simply sending out a photo of a co-worker dressed up like Ron Burgundy for halloween...
...it's best to protect the photos from being used, photoshopped, or reproduced on someone else's page.
Watermarking.
More than likely you've heard of it. More than likely you know what it is. But, did you know it's a fairly simple process to watermark your own images so you, too, can protect the images you're posting.
Evan Advokat, from Ritz Camera here in KC (formerly known as Wolf Camera), walked me through the process. Photoshop is probably the most common program, he says, so these directions are for Photoshop. Scroll down for an easy alternative.
1 - decide on a font for your text. In Photoshop, start by creating a new canvas approx. 300 pixels by 300 pixels. Select the text tool and type your watermark. There are different effects you can use on the text, such as bevel and emboss. Those options will give you a 3-dimensional effect. Once you have your text, you can use the "free transform" tool to enlarge the watermark to fill the page.
2 - Now you are ready to apply the watermark to an image. Evan says:
Now you are ready to apply the watermark to an image. Open the first image to be watermarked. Create a new layer and call it "watermark." In your toolbox, select the custom shape tool. Locate your watermark and drag it onto the new layer. Using the free transform tool again size the watermark according to the image. Then right click on that layer in your history and adjust the opacity of that layer. The watermark should be visible but not offensive to the image. Finally you will need to flatten the image and save as a copy.
In Photoshop you can create a batch process that will automatically repeat these steps to apply the watermark to multiple images.
Since many of you reading this may still be saying, "huh?", Evan says there's also a very easy website to use... http://www.watermarktool.com/.
It's what I've used to watermark both of the images I've posted. I just happened to have a couple of images on my work computer: the one I posted above of our colleague Sean Brite, and this one of our family pet, the late Jed Dubill, dressed as a hot dog.
Good luck watermarking. Have a great day.