Wednesday, February 20, 2013

Water Marking your blog pictures

There has been a lot of talk around lately in the blogging community that I follow within the 2 wheeled world about people ripping off your pictures and using them on other websites and possibly for commercial purposes. Erik and Ms M have both been looking at water marking there pictures due to them having their snaps ripped off. Erik for the purposes of explaining I'm going to use your favourite photo, I hope you don't mind.

There is not much that you can do to protect your photos from being downloaded by other people so you will just have to live with it. But what you can do is put a water mark onto each photo. It won't stop people from stealing them but at least your web site or blog name is on the picture. If the text is near the edge they can just crop it off but that's extra work for them and most thieves just don't like working very hard do they?

How do you water mark your picture? This is fairly easily done if you have some photo editing software. I use Photoshop but you can use anything. There is some free software called paint.NET that can be downloaded used to edit your photos, its an up spec version of Microsoft paint. Everyone that has a google account can also use Picasa3 to edit your photos and watermark them as well.
I always make a copy of all the photos I use on my blog so then I can edit them. That way I have the original copy just in case.


Its pretty easy to get started its just a little time consuming is the only problem but I have complete control over the photo, text placement, text colour and any effects I want.

Creating your Water mark - In Photoshop

To watermark your image, first select the text button from the toolbar then secondly select the colour you want the text to appear in, in this case I'll make the watermark in Kawasaki colours.




Once you click on the colour button on the tool bar the colour palet will come up. From here you can either select the colour from the palet or use the ink dropper tool which is high lighted on the left hand tool bar and click on any part of the picture to grab that colour. The circled part of the fairing is what I picked as the colour which shows up as Red: 99, Blue: 6, Green: 212.

 


Once the colour is selected just highlight a section on the photo about the size you want the text to be and type in your text as per next picture.


 


From there you can move the text into any place you want, re size the text and even add effects to it like drop shadows etc. To add a drop shadow click on the fx button and then select the drop shadow from the menu and use the sliders to get the desired effect.





There you have it a quick easy way to put text over any of your picture where you have full control of the picture size when you save it, most of my pictures are around 3-4mb but when i save them with photoshop I can select the size of the image which is usually about 700kb to 1mb. Save your watermark so you can use it on every photo you want to use.

So here is the finished product.


The next 2 pictures are just variations on the same theme I have already made. One of them is a little harder to see the text than the other.



Oh and by the way Erik if you want the photos of your bike shoot me an email and I'll send them to you.

Creating your Water mark - In PICASA3

It's very simple to watermark your photos with Picasas3 although it doesn't have many options to allow you to create effects etc but you can still watermark all your photos. If I was using this I would also make a copy of all the pics you are using just in case something goes wrong and your original pictures are damaged or lost.

First open Picasa3 and select a photo you want from your library.



Then once you have selected the picture then select the text button.

 

From this page you can just type your text on the page and then use the buttons on the left to adjust the text colour, size, font then you can just drag the text into the position you want it in by clicking on the ring around the text. If you want to turn the text onto a different angle you can click on the circle part around the text and drag the little wheel until the text is in the position you want.


Now to make the text transparent just drag the slider up and down until you are happy with the level of transparency.



The disadvantage that I can see with Picasa3 is that unless your watermark is fairly simple in its design then you could spend ages doing every single picture with each individual setting. This isn't the case using photoshop as when you make your watermark text once and then you save it and just add it to each picture, quite simple really. With Picasa3 it looks like you need to make your water mark each time, a time consuming process which is not for me.

So there you have it 2 different ways to watermark your picture. If you use the free PAINT.NET program it is similar to Microsoft paint and also photoshop but with fewer features. Happy blogging.


Captains Blog Supplemental

21-2-2012
I've also just discovered that Photoshop will also batch watermark all my photos, it just needs to be set up for vertical and horizontal pictures. It worked a treat tonight so that will save me a little more time on the next blog post. Its a little bit involved, but if someone wants to know then maybe I'll have to do another post. Cheers for the idea Bob.

13 comments:

  1. chillertek, you are awesome! :) thanks so much! if you don't mind, i'd like to put up a link to your info/page on my post. i'm sure this will help other 2 wheeled bloggers like us.

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  2. Thanks for taking the time to do the step by step Steve. It is appreciated.

    While I don't have photoshop I do have a google account so Picassa3 might work.

    Or maybe I need to do some digging around my iPhoto - that is what we use as a default photo program on our iMac and when I plug in the camera the pics automatically downloads to it.

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    Replies
    1. Brandy there are lots and lots of different photo editing programs. Any of them will work fine. Find one that suits your needs and use that. Its not terribly difficult, after all its just a little text over the top of a picture.

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    2. I did some poking around on the net looking at programs yesterday. Didn't find anything in iPhoto, but gave it a try for an older pic in Picassa.

      As a test I tried it on a pic from a blog post in November and it worked fine, then it asked to replace the pic with the changes and I said 'sure why not'. So...now I have a blog post from last November that has one watermarked picture in it. Too funny.

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    3. Oh, and I almost forgot - thank you great and powerful Steve.

      http://youtu.be/amwaFNZYUUY

      :-)

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  3. Nicely done! You make it look so easy.

    I'll have to take a little time and check out some of the software that's in my computer already. I've been experimenting a bit with some photo related programs.

    Oh, great choice for the text color, that's what I'd have gone with too.

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    Replies
    1. Thanks mate, it really is fairly easy. I like the kawasaki green, seeing as I previously owned a green ZX-9.

      I couldn't find an email address to ask you if it was alright to use your pic for the demonstration, and I got a bit worried that I may have over step the bounds so to speak by using your pic. I'm glad you were ok with it.

      Maybe you could put up your contact email address somewhere.

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  4. I had a Spanish insurance company sniped a couple of shots of my XS500. http://www.segurojoven.com/seguromoto/seguro-yamaha/YAMAHA-XS-500.php
    I jumping aboard the watermark bandwagon as well.

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  5. Steve, I know that Geoff James had a couple of pics lifted and used in a motorcycle magazine - a NZ publication IIRC.

    I'm embarrassed to say that it was only recently that I learned how to batch process with watermarks after years of owning Photoshop Elements 6 - and that was after I emailed you to remind me of a free program that could do it!

    Great work mate.

    Cheers Jules

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