How to Watermark Photos in Lightroom Video Lecture | Adobe Lightroom CC: Photo Editing Masterclass - Design

hey everybody welcome into this is
doubly Lightroom tutorial brought to you
as always by at VidCon use all the title
up there right we're to talk about
watermarking images here in Lightroom
we're gonna pretty much try cover the
ins and outs of it including hopping
over to Photoshop to create a custom
graphic watermark kind of a very
intrusive big X with like your logo in
the middle kind of watermark but really
fun it'll be cool I think we'll learn a
thing or two if you don't enjoy this
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making these videos in the future let's
talk about watermarks in a Lightroom so
first and foremost you can get to your
watermarks up under here
Lightroom edit watermarks on a Windows
machine this would be edit edit edit
watermark so view here under the Edit
menu Lightroom edit watermarks when we
do this well number one whatever is
selected image we have it's going to
show us a watermark as you can see here
above that selected image we can change
this watermark we're just using any old
watermark here I could change this and
say look on a Fanueil Dodson and we
could say - vidcom or whatever we wanted
the watermark to be right you probably
have web addresses maybe it'll Genki to
put in a watermark we go with like
Nathaniel dodge and we could go with a
copyright sign which by the way for the
Mac is alter I'm sorry it's option G for
the PC is alt and on the near number pad
it's all hold down the Alt key and hit 0
169 and then let go the Alt key and you
will get the little copyright to show up
maybe I'll put the copyright at the
beginning of the letter start of the
watermark something like that copyright
Nathaniel Dodson and you can use that
all kinds of stuff to play with here
different fonts different styles
alignment you could throw a drop shadow
underneath it I'm not the biggest man of
a drop shadow on a watermark I'm going
to shut that off I think it kind of
looks cheap you can change the opacity
of the watermark which is probably a
nice thing to do you don't really want
the watermark to be like in your face
down here sizing is interesting you
could go with fit which will fit it
across your image
maybe not the best to look if you change
your anchor point to the very center
maybe that's what you'd watch us have
the watermark boom right across the
middle really make sure nobody's going
to take your image right something like
that if you're working with highly I
don't know highly confidential stuff or
stuff that people absolutely cannot be
taking and posting on Facebook something
like that just to make sure they get the
point that hey you're not going to crop
this watermark out you can go with Phil
which tends to just do all kinds of
weird stuff just you know I don't know I
never use Phil and like I ever have
proportional is interesting though I
kind of dig proportional the cool thing
about proportional by the way let's
we'll adjust the size in a moment I want
to talk about anchor you can anchor the
copyright to any corner or middle area
of your photo so like we give a top
corner I'm going to go with the bottom
left-hand corner for now and just going
to anchor it right there and now we can
go back to proportional size the nice
thing about proportional size is it's
going to be proportional to the size of
your image so maybe you work with some
huge resolution images and some tiny
resolution images this will ensure that
your watermark is always about that big
with relation to the rest of your image
it's a really really nice feature to
have here in your watermark editor and
also we have rotation options so
sometimes I like to just throw my
watermark up against the side wall like
that and when you do that maybe you want
to change the inset you want to boost it
vertically a little bit maybe even boost
horizontally just a little bit like that
to get it off the very edge of the photo
and my Mac is letting me know that my
track that battery's yellow thank you
let's continue on with the tutorial
see guys stuff happens and with this
particular watermark here I think I will
just the opacity really would have to be
reduced a little bit more something like
that now you can check out the photo and
the watermarks not super distracting in
which case you can then save their what
and save the watermark as you know I
don't know watermark oh one or something
whatever create that and we're going to
have that as an option when we go to
watermark our photos let's jump back up
here to the Edit watermarks dialog box
Lightroom edit watermarks of course and
we'll talk about using a graphic now I
should just make a quick side note I did
kind of throw some shade no pun intended
on the shadows before adding a shadow
can help to a watermark especially if
you don't because you don't always know
like the color in the tone and you know
you could have an image with a white
background in which case a white
watermark even if it's set to an opacity
of like 30% still not going to be
visible so you might want to throw a
shadow there if you're
doing that kind of shooting a lot you
know you're shooting that way so just
something to keep in mind like I said
just purely aesthetically not
practically speaking I really don't like
the shadow on a watermark but then again
aesthetically speaking I don't like a
watermark period now we have an option
up here to choose a PNG or JPEG image or
just hit the graphic icon and it's going
to launch your browser finder window I
have not created that graphic however so
let's jump over to photoshop and create
a graphic or you're in Photoshop I have
a document this is a 9000 by 6,000
pixels in fact I'll just close it and
we'll start with a new document file new
and we're going to go 9000 by 6,000 soar
new 9000 by 6,000 and this is a perfect
2 to 3 ratio image I'm going with a
resolution of 300 it's big I'm going to
go ahead and get hit create now we can
do we'll set our background to the color
black so I'm just going to straight up
hit the command or the hotkey command I
to the control I on the PC and we're
going to grab our rectangle tool shape
creator or shape tool and here I'm going
to use I want to make sure I'm drawing a
shape I want to set the fill to white so
I'm just here for my color picker going
to choose a true white go and hit OK the
stroke I'm going to say no stroke at all
so just white and a stroke or no stroke
excuse me and then I'm going to drag a
white bar across my document just like
that right so I got a just a solid white
bar across my document now what I'm
going to do is go edit free transform
path I'm going to zoom out just a little
bit I'm going to make the path a bit
longer so I'm just going to you know
nudge it or drag it all the way over
like that so it's really really long and
I'm going to commit that change next
what I need to do is align this to the
very center of my document so I'm going
to do that by going select all and I
have this rectangle layer selected I'm
going to grab my move tool with this
little cross arrow up there and I'm
going to align it the horizontal and
vertical centers of my document and then
go select deselect at this point I'm
again going to go edit free transform
I'm going to free transform that path
and I'm going to just rotate this up so
it's cutting through both the top and
bottom corners of my what would be my
image I'm going to commit that change
I'm going to duplicate this layer
command or control J and then I'm going
to go edit free transform and I'm going
to rotate this image in the opposite
direction I'm going to rotate this until
it goes through the top and bottom
corners just like that and you can make
it as perfect or not perfect as you like
it really doesn't matter all
that that much now with these two layers
I'm going to hold down my shift key and
select the bottom rectangle so we've got
both rectangles like you might select
the top one hold down shift select the
bottom one and I'm going to hit command
or control e to merge those shapes
together now all I need to do is mask a
center area out of the middle but I
wanted to kind of look I want to look a
little graceful for being an absurdly
intrusive watermark so what I'm going to
do is I'm going to grab my elliptical
marquee tool and I'm going to start
right in the very middle of my document
hold on my alter option key and drag out
a perfect circle in the middle just like
that and then I'm going to go select
modify feather and I'm going to feather
this by oh I don't know 150 pixels
something like that and then with this
rectangle shaped layer selected I'm
going to go layer layer mask hide
selection and it's going to knock the
middle of that area out and give it a
little bit of a fade as well after that
what I would do is drag my logo right
into the middle now I don't have a logo
queued up to be dragged in so I'm going
to grab the text tool and let's just
create something that's you know your
logo keep things kind of dumb simple
here open up my character panel I'm
going to change the color of the text to
white so we can actually see it and
let's make it quite a bit larger here
maybe 150 points and I will drag this
down to the middle of my document just
like that so your logo will be in the
middle and you've got these little you
know X marks going across it what we
need to do now is reduce the opacity of
this whole thing so I'm going to select
my text layer which is selected hold
down shift and select a rectangle layer
and hit use hockey command or ctrl G to
group those up and this is our watermark
right and I want to reduce the opacity
but not too much we'll just knock it
down to like I don't know 40 something
like that right that's good we want to
get rid of the background layer because
it's black and it's really in our way
but before we do that we really because
we're working with a vector shape here
we need to merge this stuff together
otherwise Lightroom or Photoshop exports
in a certain way and Lightroom could
import it in a certain way we just want
to make sure that everything's going to
work well so we're basically going to
essentially flatten this image but not
yet what we want to do is select the
watermark layer group right click on it
and just choose to merge the group it's
going to turn that into like pixel
artwork and if we want to go even
further just to make sure there's
nothing hanging out around the edge of
our document right with this watermark
layer you might say nope nothing's
hanging out there but if we
edit free transform there is stuff out
there that could be moved around and
potentially misinterpreted so they can
just go like select select all and go
image crop it's going to trim late
anything that could be hanging out
outside there select deselect and now if
we go back to edit free transform you
can see that just the stuff we can see
that's all that's in our image great we
can grab our background here and drag it
to the garbage or we can even we can
help we can leave it because the way
we're going to export this we're just
going to export this one single layer by
right-clicking on it and choose export
as I say leave the black background
because it makes a little easier to see
our watermark if we ever decide we're
going to go back in and tweak or adjust
or make a new watermark so here it is
it's very difficult to see because it's
over a checkered transparent background
but this is important you might see just
solid white because you have the JPEG
format chosen you want to make sure you
go with PNG and make sure that you have
transparency checked on give it a second
it'll knock all the white away and just
leave our artwork in fact we don't even
see the black background because all
we're doing is exporting this watermark
layer go ahead and choose export all
it's just one layer though we'll name it
watermark dot PNG I'll save it on my
desktop if it's your company watermark
you probably want to save it like a
company assets folder or something like
that
and then we'll go back over to Lightroom
now here in Lightroom once more we're
going to go Lightroom edit watermarks
now up here on edit watermarks remember
before I said a pretty much never use
fit or fill with text I basically never
use them but with a watermark like this
it's exactly what you're going to want
to use so let's choose like fit and here
under image options we can choose an
image or we could just go with graphic
which is going to launch your your image
picker and there it is
watermark type PNG double click it and
it's going to bring it in and you can
see we now have this watermark that
covers our entire image by the way if
you just left sized at proportional
you're just going to have your watermark
down in the corner which actually could
be perfect if you just want your logo to
be the watermark down in a corner or
maybe smack-dab in the middle of the
image something like that I wanted to be
smack dab in the middle of the image but
I want it to fit to my image as well and
the reason that fit is important is
because this this logo will apply to any
image no matter the orientation or size
so we can just choose save to save this
as a you know I don't know overlay X
preset or something I can just go ahead
and hit create and we can come over to
like this photo of this girl now it's
portrait orientation not landscape
orientation let's see what
happens well we can preview it of course
by going Lightroom edit watermarks and
from our presets we can choose overlay X
and we can see there's what we get we
get that right in the middle now if we
go with Phil you can see it's going to
be a bigger version of the logo which
maybe is what you're looking for but I
think I kind of like fit a little bit
better we still get a nice X in there
and it works out nicely I'm just going
to go ahead and choose cancel to get out
of that dialog box
now that we've agonizingly and
painstakingly created our watermarks how
do you apply a watermark to a photo in
Lightroom well as of right now there's
four different ways that I'm aware that
you can apply a watermark to your photo
in Lightroom number one you can apply a
watermark when you're exporting an image
you right click on a photo you choose
export you choose export from the export
menu and down here you can choose
watermarking you can check on watermark
and then choose the watermark you wish
to place let's go with overlay X and
we're just saving this to our desktop
great in fact let's resize this to yet
to 2048 by 2048 on either the width or
height it's really going to be the width
because that's the longer side here and
just choose export it's going to export
the photo and we can jump right out to
the desktop and preview the image and
there is as a JPEG e Co 2 or 0 0 to jpg
with the watermark applied so that's one
way to apply a watermark another way
that a watermark can be applied is when
you're creating a slideshow so here you
can create a slideshow with one or
multiple images and over here in the
overlays section of the right-hand panel
is the option to watermark so we go
small bottom or go I go with that
overlay X watermark again I could go
with that which one do we do before
watermark - oh one is that we did yeah
there it is and it's over there in the
bottom corner just like you would expect
it and if we go to like you know one of
the other images boom same watermark
there we go to the portrait orientation
image boom the watermark is right there
and so on and so forth
so this of course you'll be exporting a
slideshow or you could export it as a
PDF and all of your images would have a
watermark pretty nice you can also apply
a watermark when you're building a print
layout so we create a layout of images
maybe we have multiple images here and
those images on all these pages each
image needs its own watermark of course
we scroll down here and we have this
option to include water marking I could
go with the overlay X watermark and it's
going to place the watermark on both the
images like that
spray
you know you're sending a contact sheet
off to a client you want to make it
extremely clear hey these photos don't
take them amongst them on Facebook even
if you can screenshot them sometimes
it's difficult to get that point across
you could do something very intrusive
like the overlay X or if you really
trust the client they're usually great
you just slap a little watermark on
there and you know that it is what it is
and last but not least here under the
web option which I don't really know
many people that use the web gallery
option but it is an option here in Adobe
Lightroom you have the option to add a
watermark to your images here in the web
gallery if we scroll down you can see
here in the output settings we have the
option to include a watermark as well
overlay X is just so easy to see here in
the previews you can even see it here
and all these little images
boom-boom-boom-boom-boom
they all have that overlay X watermark
applied to them so a lot of cool water
marking options for us here in Adobe lay
Ramona head back to the develop module
here just so we can see our Central Park
photo here so that will pretty much do
it for this tutorial I know it's kind of
a boring topic it's watermarking right
but if you want to know how to watermark
your images and that's something that's
important to you it's kind of essential
information right you need to get those
images watermark and hopefully watermark
beautifully if again you do choose to
watermark so I'm not much of a watermark
guy myself but that's how it's done in
Lightroom now if you've enjoyed this
tutorial again make sure you subscribe
to my channel here on YouTube and if you
really enjoyed the video and you're
looking to support the channel and the
content that we're creating here please
go ahead and pick up a copy of the
course it really helps out what we're
doing here and that course by the way
it's all about how to retouch images and
stuff like that in a Photoshop not
Lightroom not yet I'm working on
Lightroom course but it's not quite
ready yet for creating watermarks and
more particularly creating in placing
watermarks here in Adobe Lightroom using
the Edit watermarks dialog and so much
more that's it get it good Nathaniel
Dodson stuck vidcom get you this
you
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