Watermarking Baby, Watermarking

Happy Monday Sweeties...

I hope you all had a lovely weekend!

Well, the Pinterest Controversy continues. Even we seemed to stir

up some lively debates that I'm still getting some comments & emails

about. But what I want to address in this post, is how to add a

watermark to your photographs. Some of you mentioned you weren't

exactly sure how to do this process & I'd love to help...that is if I can.  ;)

{disclaimer: it is completely possible that after reading this tutorial you may

know even less about watermarks then you did prior to reading this post, lol}

Most of the photographs I add to the worldwide web, whether through my

blog or facebook or flickr, I am not concerned about any form of copyright

infringement. They are put on the internet with the joy of sharing, to me that's

what the internet is all about. Sharing facts, history, information, images, creations,

joys & sorrows, for me the GREAT so outweighs the bad. But there are a few

images that I want to keep just for me. This post has a few of them &

therefore they are watermarked. I have dreamed about creating a card line

with some of my digital designs called 'JUST SAYIN' to go along with my

spoon jewelry line, 'SPOONIN'. {it could happen! lol}

Definition of photo Watermarking...

A logo or mark that is superimposed on an image to create a pattern that

indicates proof of ownership, typically used as security for copyright protection. 

On the first 2 images I added the watermark in Photoshop, which is a

program not everyone has access to. I put the words 'just sayin' on them,

but thinking about it now, that doesn't give anyone information on what

the original source is for the image. So in the image above I decided to add

my blog address to it instead, now we have an original source.

I use a free photo editing program for all my pictures by Google called Picasa.

Through Picasa I can crop, contrast, lighten, saturate, make black & white,

sepia tone, blur & add text. On the two images above I used the Picasa

text tool to add my watermark & it is sooo easy. It's literally a click of

a button, 'ADD TEXT', then you can choose the font you like, the size

you want, the color of text & it even has transparency to make your

watermark lighter or darker. I'm happy with the end result.

Here, I tried a smaller, lighter & more delicate watermark with Picasa. A watermark

doesn't have to overwhelm an image, that's totally up to you. There is an added  step with

Picasa though, you can not upload your photo directly from it. You must export it to a

folder, which I put on my desktop & then upload it from there. I mean it takes

all of 2 minutes to do, but for some this could be frustrating.

If you Google search, Free Easy Watermarking, you will find many different

programs to choose from. I looked at many of them, some look pretty straight

forward & easy & some require a download & look a bit more confusing.

Visual Watermark has a one time fee of $20, but looks like it has all

the features I would want from a watermarking program.

I found some good tutorials on-line about watermarking

& wanted to share them with you.

BYTESCOUT shares a tutorial using Widows Paint

ABOUT.COM has a simple tutorial with several programs included

OBSCURED CLARITY blog shares a tutorial for Mac users

Like I said in the beginning,

I hope I didn't confuse you more then inform you! ;)

Bottom line, copyrighting my images is up to me.

Protecting my intellectual property is my responsibility.

And the reality is, if someone really wanted to, they

could crop out my watermark & do anything they wanted

with any of these images. Am I worried....ahhhh, NO!

I'm too busy researching my family's genealogy on Ancestry.com,

but that's a whole other story!!

Big Hugs...

XOXO

vintagesusie