By request, here’s a great way to protect your images – “Watermark” them in Photoshop! Anytime you send out a file or small print of your images to a potential client for review or post your images on the web, you are at risk of someone stealing your images. By putting a simple watermark on your images in Photoshop, you can help reduce this possibility.

Here are the steps (I am assuming a basic familiarity with Photoshop):

1) In Photoshop, create a new file. Go to the “File” menu ? “New…”. I’d suggest a Width of 10”, a height of 8”, 300 pixels/inch, and Transparent Background Contents. Press “Enter”.

2) Now select the “Horizontal Type Tool” in the Tools Palette (Speed key is “T”). If your Character Palette is not visible, go to the “Window” menu, and click on “Character”. I’d suggest Arial Typeface, 36 pt, and choose “black” as your text color (double click on the “color” box, then select RGB values of 0,0,0 in the Color Picker).

3) Type your information for your watermark by clicking near the left-center of your file. I’d put the copyright symbol in your text, as well as the year and your company or personal name. The copyright symbol (©) can be created easily in Windows: With NUM LOC on, press and hold the ALT key, type “0169” on your numeric keypad, release the ALT key, and your copyright symbol is generated (In Mac, the speed key combination is “Option” ? “G”, or go to your US Characters Palette in OSX).

4) Now highlight your text (Ctrl+ A in Windows, Command + A in Mac), and change the text color to white in the Character Palette (RGB Values of 255,255,255 in the Color Picker). Then go to the “Layer” menu ? “Layer Style” ? “Stroke”.  Change the color to black, and the size at 5 pixels. Now double-click on “Drop Shadow” on the left and change the values to “20” for Distance, Spread, and Size. Click “OK” to close the “Layer Style” box. Now save your file as “Watermark.tif”. At this point, your watermark is saved for future use and repeatability. Keep your file open in Photoshop.

5) Open an image that you want to watermark. Now, select the “Move Tool” in the Tools Palette (Speed key is “V”) and highlight your “Watermark” file. Drag your watermark file onto your new image. This creates a new layer in your new image with your watermark on it .

6) With the watermarked layer highlighted in your new image, you can A) move the watermark around to your desired location using the Move tool, B) change the size with the “Free Transform” tool (“Edit” menu ? “Free Transform”) and C) change the opacity of the layer in the Layers Palette by highlighting the Text Layer, then moving the Opacity Slider in the Layers Palette.

Don’t forget, you can customize your Watermark by changing the size, color and style of your text, stroke and drop shadow, opacity – the possibilities are infinite – experiment to suit your personality and taste!

Cheers,

John 🙂