How to Add a Watermark to Your Product Photos

How to Add a Watermark to Your Product Photos
A watermark is a semi-transparent image that you put on top of your product photos. Its purpose is to remind people that the photo is copyrighted and also it makes it more difficult to copy the photo. The size of the watermark can vary as to its purpose. You will want to strike a balance between protecting your photo and obscuring it.

There are many applications, both free and commercial, that can add a watermark to your product photos for you. But, in reality it is an easy process to do in AdobeR PhotoshopR Elements 7.

1. Open Adobe Photoshop Elements 7 and click on the Edit button to go to the Editor workspace.

2. Your first step is to open your product photo into PE. From the Menubar, click File – Open. In the Open dialog box, click on your product photo.

3. Our next step is to add a new layer that will hold our watermark. From the Layers panel, click on the New Layer button. Change the default name for this layer from Layer 2 to "watermark".

We will use the Custom Shape tool from the Toolbox to draw the Copyright symbol as our watermark.

4. Click on the Custom Shape tool (looks like a heart). By default, PE only has a few shapes available in the Options bar so we need to load the rest of the shapes to get the Copyright symbol. In the Options bar, click on the double arrow to open the pop-out menu. Choose the All Elements Shapes option to open all the custom shapes that came with PE. Click on the Copyright shape.

5. At the bottom of the Toolbox you will see two colored squares. The top square is the Foreground Color Box. Click on this square to display the Color Picker. In the Color Picker, set the color code to "CCCCCC" which is a gray color.

6. From the Options bar, set the Style drop-down list to Simple Inner. This will give the symbol a 3D appearance.

5. Click and drag on the photo to draw the symbol. Hold down the Shift key on your keyboard to maintain the correct shape. Click on the Move tool at the top left corner of the Toolbar. Use this tool to position the Copyright symbol over the center of the photo.

6. Click on the watermark layer in the Layers panel. Use the Opacity slider to set the opacity for this layer to between 10 to 20 percent.

7. From the Menubar, click the Simplify button to finish the watermark.

8. Our last step is to save our photo in a format for the web. From the Menubar, click File – Save for Web. In the Save for Web dialog box, set the File Format to JPEG and the Compression to High. Click OK to save your file to your images folder.

Copyright 2018 Adobe Systems Incorporated. All rights reserved. Adobe product screen shot(s) reprinted with permission from Adobe Systems Incorporated. Adobe, Photoshop, Photoshop Album, Photoshop Elements, Illustrator, InDesign, GoLive, Acrobat, Cue, Premiere Pro, Premiere Elements, Bridge, After Effects, InCopy, Dreamweaver, Flash, ActionScript, Fireworks, Contribute, Captivate, Flash Catalyst and Flash Paper is/are either [a] registered trademark[s] or a trademark[s] of Adobe Systems Incorporated in the United States and/or other countries.





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