Ask SoNailicious: How to Watermark Photos?

With nail art trending, it’s not surprising that the most frequently asked question I get asked is not about nail care routine or nail art techniques but… how to watermark photos? Watermarking photos helps to strengthen/build your brand and is also the easiest way to protect your photos from unauthorized use. Should any dispute arise, watermarks can help a lot with proving your ownership of the photo. When I started SoNailicious I resisted watermarking photos properly (see here) and I paid my price for it.

So my advice to anyone uploading their work online and wanting to protect their work is to add watermark to photos in such way that no one would be able to blur or crop the watermark off – right in the middle of the crucial element of the photo. In case of nail art photos, close to your nails, preferably somewhere in the middle.

There are two ways to watermark photos depending on whether you take photos with a camera or a phone. For camera photos we recommend Adobe Photoshop (described below) or almost any other photo-editing software. Photoshop is our choice because it has so much other functionality. It is so widely used that if you don’t use it already you probably will in the future so why not learn now? However, if you’re not keen to invest in Photoshop just yet, GIMP is one of the most powerful free image editors our there. For iPhone/Android photos, we’ll look at these options next Sunday in our upcoming Ask Sonailicous post.

Without further ado, here’s our Photoshop watermarking tutorial. After editing photos in the Camera Raw editor I convert them to .jpg and then watermark them in Photoshop. Here’s how…

1. Open your image in Photoshop – File/Open. Deselect all layers and the layer window. Select the Pen tool from the toolbar and left click to initiate a path. Move the cursor to where you want the path to end and left click and drag to bend the path. Now you should have a curve with two points. Don’t worry if it’s not perfect, you can adjust later.
2. Select the Text tool. Left Click on the curve and start typing. Change the colour of the text by clicking the colour option in the upper tab or adjust Opacity of the layer by selecting the Text layer and dragging Opacity level (I usually opt for 70% opacity).
3. Select the Direct Selection tool from the toolbar. Click on a point at the very end of your path. Use the handles to adjust the shape of the curve.

That’s it, easy!

If you’re having trouble finding the tools, hover your mouse over each tool icon in the toolbar, after a couple of seconds the tool name will appear.

How do you watermark photos? Do you use Photoshop or other photo-editing software? Share your tips with us!

And, as always, if you have any nail or nail blogging related questions, just ask – email your questions to Maria at editor@sonailicious.com.

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Check out other posts from the Ask SoNailicious series.

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