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Lesson Info

Creating a Watermark

branding is really important, especially when you're throwing your work out there for the world to see. You want to make sure they know who created each image. And one of the ways that you can do that is by creating a watermark. And so we are going to be creating several different watermarks and I'll show you how you can do your own custom watermarks. And so there are a couple things to understand when it comes to creating a watermark. So a couple of bullet points here, first a transparent PNG file works fantastic is what I think is what works best. So you need to understand what those are. And then also you can create different, several different watermarks for later use. And so this is the equivalent of creating a preset. So we are going to set up several different versions of different watermarks with different brands and then you can see that we can use those watermarks with our exports export presets. And then later on we'll be using those same exact watermarks for our slideshow a...

nd web modules and print modules. And so we have one consistent way to create watermarks. And then we can use them over and over in many different ways and we can customize everything. So let's hop over into Light Room Classic. And what we will do here is if we go up to Light Room Classic at the top of the menu here. So we have filed Light Room Classic, we have edit watermarks and so we want to click on that. You will get a little dialogue here that says watermark editor. Now, one thing I just want to mention about this is that there are many different places in Light Room Classic, where you can create and manage watermarks. So, in the preset, the export preset dialog, we had a little watermark section. We could have created those watermarks there. And the web module, there's a way to create watermarks in the print module, there's a way to create watermarks. Um and so, uh there are many different ways that you can get to this dialogue. And so I will be pointing those out as we go to those other modules. It's the same dialogue, no matter which way you get there. Um so let's dive back in and and work on this. So when you create a watermark, you have the choice to either create a text watermark or a graphic watermark. And so what I want to do here is I want to create a basic text watermark. And so once we get it done, we'll be able to save this as a new preset. So, I'm gonna go in here and I'm gonna type on this ah copyright mark, Wallace Photography. And this will come up by default, your own whatever you've logged in to Creative Cloud, it will show up there, you can barely see it. But down here there is my watermark previewed. So this check every box here is representing an image. So what we can do is we can tell the watermark how large it should be and where it should be anchored should be anchored on the left and the center in the middle or whatever. So these little controls here will help us to do that. And so I can just click this and drag it to make it larger. I can click on this and move it around so it's really sort of easy. So we're going to do here is we're gonna choose the text options. You can change fonts and styles. I'm just gonna go with adobe clean. Regular white font is great because most of my images are dark but you can change that to any color that you want. I'm just going to leave that as white. A drop shadow is always a good idea. And so if you have a white image, the drop shadow will make that text show up. You can also offset this shadow by a certain amount. So I don't like the shadow to be too noticeable. So I'm gonna make that about eight. You can play with this to see what works best for you. And then also you can change the opacity of your watermark so maybe you don't want it to totally be opaque. So you can go in here and say maybe make this see through so 50% or whatever. So you can be faded in and out. And then also you can change the size so proportional you can say make this always about this size no matter what the images. So remember When you're exporting images, some images are gonna be vertical, some are gonna be horizontal, some of them are gonna be really big, some are gonna be really small. So you don't want your watermark to be the exact same size for all images. You want it to grow and shrink. So that is proportional. So in a really big image it takes up about 60% of the image and early small image, It only takes up about 60% of the image or whatever that is. You wanted to grow and shrink as the images grow and shrink depending on what you're exporting or how you're putting them out there. So that's what this proportional size is. You can always also say fit just fit it inside of this bounding box. Whatever the image sizes or fill the words, fill up the entire image as much as possible. And so normally with the text you will use proportional and you would tell it how proportional you want it to be. So I'm gonna put this about 21. So all my images, it should be just a little bit more than half. Then the inset tells light room if you wanted to come in from the edge, a little bit from the horizontal and the vertical you wanted to come in and how far and then the anchor tells you, do you want it to be anchored at the top, up here, on the center, you want it to be anchored on the side, right, dead center at the bottom etcetera. You can choose where you want your your watermark to show up. So for this one, I'm gonna choose the lower left hand corner. You can also rotate these so they're upside down, vertical, sideways, whatever you want to do. So I'm just going to keep this standard but you'll see that you might want to have these rotated and remember you can make many different watermarks. So this is just gonna be my basic text watermark. And so what I'm gonna do here is I'm gonna go up here and I'm gonna save this all these settings. I'm gonna save this as a new preset and the preset is going to be mark Wallace. Basic text, text, I'm going to create that and then I will say done. Now we have a watermark preset set up. So what do we do with it? Let's go back to our export dialog and see what we can do with this. So I have this image here of this bridge in Prague going to go to file and then export. And I'm gonna go I again, I've chosen client output so well take the settings that we created from this preset previously. The only thing I'm going to change with this is I'm going to go down here or it says watermark and I'm going to choose my mark Wallace basic text watermark and then I'm going to export it. So we're using the export presets. Now look, we have a watermark on this image. Now if I go back to my like room classic edit watermarks, I'm going to go down to my Mark Wallace basic text and let's say, I want to change this. So I want to make this dead center. I wanted to fill fit the image so it's really big. But I wanted to sort of fade out something like that. Now I'm going to save this as a new preset and this one is going to be Mark Wallace Large centered. I'm going to create that and then I'll say done now if we go exports. So I'm gonna say export, it's going to remember everything that I put in last time. Except for this time, I'm going to change my watermarking to Mark Wallace Large centered exports and I will use a unique name for this image. It's going to pop up and now there's our watermark and it shows up now that's what a horizontal image. Let me show you what happens when we choose a vertical image. So I'm gonna go down here, I'm gonna save some time. I'm just gonna say export with previous. This is something I didn't show you previously, but export with previous just says do the exact same thing that you just did. So you don't have to, if you don't have a export preset, but you like what you just did, you can use export with previous. So that's what I'm going to do. Use all the same exact settings export with previous and it's going to say, hey, this file already exists. I'm going to say use unique names. It's going to export this and now look, so it automatically adjusts so that this fits. No matter if it's a horizontal image or a vertical image, remember it's centering that it's making it sort of opaque translucent and so that works great. And so it's going to automatically change no matter what kind of image that you choose, it's going to keep up with you. Okay, so let's create a different watermark. Now, one of the things you can do before, when I chose the watermark editor, I didn't have an image selected. So we couldn't get a really good preview. It's just sort of that checker box. So if you want to see what it would look like on an image, check your image and then go into edit watermarks and you can sort of see what's happening. So I could go in here and say what does my basic text watermark look like? What does my large centered watermark look like And you get that. So we're going to do a different kind of watermark for this one. So we're going to use a graphic watermark. And the first thing that's going to do is say where is your graphic? Now let me explain what kind of graphic you need to use. The simplest and best in my opinion, is just to use a transparent PNG file. But you can also use vector images from illustrator or adobe applications or coral applications are different. All kinds of different files that you can use as long as they have a transparent background but the most compatible and easiest to create our transparent PNG files, I want to show you in Photoshop. Um This is a graphic that I created in illustrator actually, but it has a transparent background so you can see if I move this background around that it's transparent so you can see that it has this transparency that we can put anything we want behind this logo. So I exported it with just no background for that very reason and exported it as a transparent PNG file. It's in your class materials. So if you go to class materials you'll see we have logos. Mark Wallace Essential Training is one of those. Mark Wallace photography is one of those and then Mark Wallace photography with a drop shadow as the D. S. Is one of those. So we have three different formats, three different files that you can play with on your own computer to sort of see how this works. We're going to use this Mark Wallace Essential Training for this. So let's go back to Light room Classic. So we're going to choose graphic and it's going to say, what is the graphic that you want to use? I'm gonna go to my light room hard drive to the class materials and then I'm going to go into my logos. Mark Wallace Essential Training. I'm going to choose that and now it has this giant overlay. It's too much. Yes, it's remembering what we chose before. So the text options are grayed out because we have no text. Ask me for the watermark effect. I want this to be totally opaque. I want this to be proportional. I wanted to be about, I don't know, 26 or so, so it's gonna be sort of large. Where do I want this to be? I have it in the top left and we'll have it offset something like that. Maybe I'll make this a little bit smaller. Okay, so now I'm going to change this to a new preset and we'll call this essentials logo, top left, create that one Lynn is take this, put it right in the center and let's fit that. And then let's make this about 80%. And when you create a new presets, save these settings as a new preset or say essentials centered. That's pretty good. And we'll make uh one more here, we'll go over to the upper right, we'll make it totally opaque. We'll make it proportional. Keep that and then I'll create this new preset as essentials, Top right, create that and then say done. Now, why did I create three different versions of that? Because that's a big logo and it's placed in three specific places. Sometimes if you have a graphic of maybe a portrait, that logo could be right over their face. And so instead of the left hand side, maybe it needs to be on the right hand side. So we need to see if this is going to work for horizontal and verticals and portraits and see nick's. So sometimes you need multiple versions of the same watermark. Let me show you what I mean. So we're going to take this image of Casey and this image of the of Prague and I will take this image here of Theresa and let's say file export. And we're going to go down here to our watermark and let's use essentials top left. That looked great for our Prague shot and we will export will use unique names. This will export throw that watermark on there. Okay, so now let's take a look that looks sort of okay, but notice we can't really read this because it has no drop shadow. So that's a problem with dark logos on dark backgrounds. The next one that looks fantastic. That looks great for that image and for this one, Oh no, it's right on Theresa's head. We don't like that. It needs to be somewhere else. So maybe for Theresa, if we exported that again, we would say export. And instead of the top left, we would say let's use essentials Top Right, I'll export that use unique names. So we don't override anything we can compare those. And now that looks pretty good. So for this logo, one thing that I'm noticing is it needs a white drop shadow. So it shows up. That's why I have the drop shadow, um and normal logos for us to play with. So let's look at what a drop shadow can do. So when you're designing your uh your watermarks, you might want to pay attention to that. So let's go in again to our light room, classic edit watermarks. And so what we'll do is we're gonna do a graphic style and we'll do Mark Wallace logo with a drop shadow and let's go down here and we'll do this proportional. Actually, let's let's do a fit. I think if it is too big it's too proportional about like that. We will apply that to top, just so we can sort of see what it is, we'll bring that down vertically and then we will save this as a really ugly preset. But let's say Mark Wallace photo, top drop shadow, we can do that, save that and done. So now let's choose a few images, this guy and this guy that file export and they will change these two. Mark Wallace Top drop shadow export. These images use unique names so we don't override anything. And now we can see that we have that looks that logo is pretty nasty. Um This shows up even though it's a dark photo with a dark logo and then that also shows up even on the right over there. So just a consideration when you're creating your drop shadows and you're creating your um, your logos and things like that. If you're working with a graphic designer, you might want to have an option that is a dark logo and a light logo. Or if you have a dark logo, make sure you have a white drop shadow. So it shows up. Or if you have a light logo, make sure you have a dark drop shadow just so you can see how that all fits. You'll see that as you're creating your watermarks, you need different versions for different file formats and orientations and things like that. But you can create as many different watermarks as you want. We'll see also that we will use these watermarks and the other modules when we're throwing things out to the web, when we're starting to put slide shows together, No more printing images. We will use these watermarks over and over there is not just for importing, that's only one place that you can use these watermarks. You can also add branding. Too many different areas of Light room Classic and we'll be seeing that as well. Okay, now that we know all about watermarks, what we need to do next is we start we need to go and start putting together an import preset. The reason we waited so long to do an import preset is we needed all of our other presets to be built out so that we can use those when we do our import presets. So let's go and do that right now.