How to watermark your blog photos quickly, plus a Photoshop tutorial video
There are certain things that happen in a visual and digital world, and one of them is straight-up image stealing. It's not that a person means to do harm when they use your photos on their own social media accounts, it's really just laziness.
But really, you've worked hard to create your blog images. Do you really want someone stealing your hard work?
It's a good idea to watermark your photos and images so that you will get credit for your images in the future.
Watermarking is a hot topic in the blogging community, and I've gone back and forth on it several times. To watermark or not to watermark? Some say it's tacky, but others argue that it's the only way to make sure another blogger or company doesn't straight-up steal your photos. I've seen it happen too many times.
Regardless, knowing how to watermark efficiently is an awesome time-saving skill.
And to go one step further, having a consistent watermark is really important for your brand. If you have one watermark that is in one blocky font, another with your signed blog name, and another with your logo, the branding will get out of hand.
So in this tutorial, let me show you basics on how to watermark and then how to save time doing it by using a "stamp" in Photoshop.
Basics of Watermarking Your Photos
In my time spent blogging, there are tons of different ways of watermarking. Some people slap their logo all over the photo over and over and over again so there would be NO WAY that you can steal their photo.
That is a little too much for me. Plus, a watermark is supposed to allow you to claim ownership over a photo or an image, but it should never distract your reader from the content.
Placement
That said, your watermark will be happiest in the corner. Your watermark isn't Baby. She knows her place as a watermark and will be happiest sitting pretty in the corner of your image.
You can leave the option to use any of the four corners, but when possible, try to use the same corner for all of your images. Since the eye travels from left to right, I recommend the bottom-right or the top-right so the reader will be able to absorb your photo first without being slapped in the face with a watermark.
Give a healthy amount of margin to your placement, too. This will also help stave off those folks who are crop-happy and will spend some time cropping off the bottom of your photo so that they can use your photo for their own content. (Those people suck.)
Size
In a nutshell, you want your watermark to be as small as possible while still being readable. It depends on if you're using a font or a logo.
Visuals
Like I mentioned at the top, it's important to keep your shit together when branding your images. A blog that has 50 types of watermarks is confusing. (Let me be real here - I've gone through several iterations of my own watermarking over the years. I'm not proud of it.)
If you have a logo that can be used at a smaller scale, use that.
If you use a certain font within your branding, use that.
If you don't have either but still want to start watermarking your images, choose a bold font that doesn't have a TON of personality. That way, if you hire a designer later to do further branding, the designer isn't stuck trying to design around a crazy-ass font that is burned into every images you've posted for the past year.
How to Stamp Your Logo On Your Blog Images
So now that you've gone through watermarking 101, let's talk Photoshop tricks.
Funnily enough, I discovered this Photoshop shortcut right after I wrote a post on how a blogger should have a standard Photoshop file in order to save time with watermarks, image text, and consistent image graphics. But moving on.
This tip is going to blow your mind!
Follow this 5 minute video to learn how to make your logo into a "stamp".
[youtube https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0f_TQrL5Uz8&w=640&h=360]
- 0:00 Hey guys it's Jenn from Hello Brio Studio. Today I'm going to show you how to make your logo into a Photoshop brush so you can stamp your watermark on all your photos in a really quick and easy way.
- 0:10 The first thing you want to do is make sure you have your logo with a transparent background.
- 0:27 In order to find the correct watermarking position, you're going to want to try with an actual photo. That way, you can tell how it's going to look when you go to use it in a real setting.
- 1:17 I'm going to drag my transparent logo onto this photo so I can see about the placement and the size.
- 1:34 Hold down Command + T and resize your logo. Because it's a vector object it won't get weird when I resize it.
- 1:48 In terms of positioning, you want to have it in one of four corners.
- 1:58 You want the photo to about the photo and then the watermark to be secondary.
- 2:09 Right-click on the layer that says HB Logo. Click Convert to Smart Object. What this is going to do is allow it to be opened in a new file now at this new size so that you don't have to carefully crop and resize your image all the way down to this size.
- 2:32 Double-click on the Smart Object thumbnail, which will open it up in a new file. From here, hit Command+A to select all, and then go to Edit -> Define Brush Preset.
- 2:58 From here, I can go back to my photo. Hit B for brush. Click for the brush preset picker and now you can see my logo. How cool is that?
- 3:18 You can see how if you drag it onto the photo, it's ready to go, and you can stamp it all you want. Stamp your heart out.
- 3:32 You can also choose whatever color you want too.
- 3:47 Open a new layer. I'm going to stamp it about where I want it.
- 4:14 I'm going to choose [an opacity] that looks good while still being visible but doesn't distract you from the content of the photo.
- 4:21 So that's really it. Now you have your watermark for your photo and then any time you go and open a new photo, you can just go ahead and stamp it wherever you need it.
- 4:30 I hope that was helpful. Please hit the subscribe button for more tutorials.
What are your thoughts on watermarking blog photos? Comment below!
Cover photo by Fabian Irsara
