If you share your images on the web, send previews to your clients, or upload photos to your portfolio, watermarking your images is an absolute must. You don’t want to spend sleepless nights worrying if some fly-by-night operator somewhere on the web is using your images for free. Watermarking isn’t a fool-proof method, it’s better than leaving your images completely vulnerable. Johny Spencer from Visual Wilderness shares an easy way to watermark your images in Lightroom:
Click on Lightroom (Mac) or File (Windows) and then Edit Watermarks. Lightroom already has a default preset. You can use that or create one for yourself.
Types of Watermarks
There are two different types of watermarks in Lightroom. There is the simple text-based watermark and the other is the graphic watermark. Let’s look at both of them.
Creating a Text-Based Watermark Preset
When using a watermark ensure that the size and positioning does not interfere with the image itself. Choosing a non-contrasting font, style, color, and opacity makes a lot of sense in that regard. There are a bunch of other options you can play around with.
Opacity
Taking down the opacity to around 60 or 70 is a good idea for black watermarks. With white you can be a bit more liberal. It all comes down to not making the watermark too obtrusive.
Spacing
Horizontal and vertical spacing needs adjusting, as well. Use the Anchor guide to get a starting point. Logos (both texts and image types) are best positioned when they are either at the right or left hand bottom corner.
Text-Based Watermark
Once you’re happy with the positioning and look of the watermark save it. A dialogue box will open up asking you for a name for the Preset.
Graphic Watermarks
For a graphic watermark you’ll need to find the image on your drive and upload it to Lightroom. Play around with the size, color, opacity and location just as you did for the text-based watermark.
Importing an image to use as a Watermark
Save it once you’re happy with the results.
Adding the Watermark to Your Images
To add the watermark to your images, you’ll need to export the image. Right-click on the image and click on Export. Check the settings before you hit export.
Exporting an image with watermark
Once you’re ready to export the image, scroll down and expand the option Watermarking. Check the box Watermark and select the Watermark Preset you want for your image.
Graphic Watermark
Do you watermark your images?
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I want to create a photo watermark in Lightroom with both image and text, but I do not have Photoshop. Any other way around it? Thanks!
I always watermark anything I’m uploading to social media. There’s a lot of downloading of images on Facebook, etc. It’s not preventable really but make sure anything uploaded is low res and watermarked so as to not make things too easy!