Watermarking Images With Photoshop

We all know how difficult it is to protect images from being taken and used without permission.  If you are like me, you've gone to all kinds of lengths to keep this from happening.  Sometimes just adding text to the images, with the word SAMPLE is one of the better options, however using that method can certainly detract from the image and make it less applealing.  A better solution is to use a 'Watermark' that is transparent and allows the image to show through while rendering it useless to anyone that wanted to take the image and use it without authorization.  Using the watermark is extremely easy to do requiring only 5 easy steps, in spite of this lengthy tutorial, that will walk you step by step through creating a watermark.  The reason there are so many steps in the tutorial is to give even the beginner clear and concise screenshots and steps on completing this technique.  Alright ~~   Lets get started !

Creating Your Watermark

Begin by opening up a new image 300 x 300 on a white background.   This might seem large right now, but it is very simple to resize the image layer once the watermark is applied.

Now Click on the 'ellipse' tool

Draw your ellipse shape

Now click on your paint bucket 

And Fill Your Ellipsed Area

Now go to SELECT / INVERSE and invert your selection

Now go to SELECT / MODIFY / EXPAND

And EXPAND by 5 Pixels

Now make your foreground color white and the background black

Again go to SELECT / INVERSE and Invert your selection

Click on your Paint Bucket

And Fill the background with white.  Now what you have left is just a black ellipse as shown below

Click On your Text Tool

Type in your text, using Black.  You can use whatever font you want, but I find that the thicker fat fonts seem to work better.  Another idea is to use a decorative dingbat with your watermark design

Now your images looks like this example below

Now go to LAYER / MERGE / FLATTEN

Click on your Magic Wand Tool

And select the background of your image

Again, go to SELECT / INVERSE and Invert your selection

Now only your ellipsed area is selected as shown below

Go to EDIT / COPY and copy your selection

Next we'll apply the watermark to your image

Click on the E-Book button below, to save and work on this tutorial offline

This tutorial was written, created, and uploaded on 10/02/99.  All images and content are copywrited, and may not be copied, reproduced, or uploaded to any other server.  Tutorial and images are property of Graphics By CandeeKis©