Protect Your Copyright: How to Add Digital Watermarks to Original Images

Deb left a great question about posting your original art on the web at How to make an Easy Money Holder Card.

I have a question about watermarks on images for Ms. Digital Guru! How in the heck do you add one??

You can see what hubby and I came up with in my latest post, Down the Rabbit Hole. We just did it in the section that allows you to add words in our scanner program.

Is there another way?? What's the best or easiest way??

Hugs!
Deb

Hi Deb,

Your watermark doesn't look bad at all! Does your scanner allow you to choose the font color? If yes, choose a lighter tint of the color where it will show up on your image. For your lovely black and white doodle, a light gray would be good.

If the area was a dark blue, for example, I would choose a lighter blue.

The best way to watermark an image is in an image editing program like Photoshop or Photoshop Elements which allows layers. GIMP is a very similar program you can download free from the internet.

I'm using one of my favorite layouts as an example, Three Dog Night.

1. Open your image file or scanned image.

2. Choose the Text Tool. That will automatically create a new layer right above your image layer.

3. Type your watermark in an appropriate color. In this case, you want to choose a contrasting color to the area where it will be stamped.

4. Use the Move Tool to position the mark just where you want. Tip: move it over an area of detail which would be hard to clean up should someone want to steal and use your image as their own.

See how it's barely noticeable it the full image. Yet it's pretty obvious in the close-up.

4. Lower the opacity of the watermark layer until it's translucent enough to still be readable. This gives you a watermark that doesn't SHOUT at the reader or potetntial buyer, but makes the image difficult to steal and use as one's own.

5. Save the file as a JPG for the web. This will automatically flatten the file to one layer. BE SURE to save it under a new name. You don't want to overwrite your original with the watermarked version.

If your goal is to protect your web images from copyright infringement, there are some more basic steps than watermarks that you should be following.

Tomorrow, I'll explain one of them in Protect Your Original Art on the Internet with Copyright Notice and Low Resolution.