Blogging 101: How to Edit and Watermark Photos (Part One)

Hello Princesses!

Today I'm going to be showing you how I watermark my photos! There are two ways that I use to watermark my photos, one for swatch, product or vanity photos, and another way for nail photos. 

But why do bloggers watermark their photos in the first place? There is a lot of theft in the blogging/vlogging business, and if you think that stealing one measly photo doesn't matter, please read this blog post that Jessie from Nailed it NZ has written about her experience with Nail Art Theft. It's illegal and annoying as heck.

With my vanity or swatch photos I have subtle/ish watermarks in the corners of each picture. I use a free online photo editor to create these watermarks called Picmonkey.

To create the watermarks on Picmonkey, first open your picture in the photo editor. Click the text button, choose your font, (Mine is Geo Sans Light) and click Add Text. 

Write whatever you would like for your watermark, mine is just my blog name. You can edit the size, colour and opacity of the text using the pop up bar to the right of the screen. 

I drag mine to a less annoying place on the photo, but to deter theft it's good to place it somewhere that won't be cropped out! That's it for the main portion of my watermarked photos. Simple right?

I've also started watermarking my nails in a more complex fashion, with a curved text around my cuticles. I found out how to do this by following Nailed It's instructions (which are bound to be better than mine!) but here is how I do it.

Open your photo in Photoshop. I use the free version (CS2) which you can download here. The first thing you need to do is to click the pen tool (P) and make sure the top settings is clicked on "Paths" rather than "Shape Layers". Shape Layers will create a big coloured splotch instead of a transparent one.

Use the Pen tool to set two anchors where you want your text to start and finish. Simply click for your first anchor, but when you click down for the second anchor you must keep the click held down to arrange your curve. You'll know what I mean when you try it!

Once you have created the line with the pen tool, click the Type Tool to add your text. Hover the cursor directly over the line (preferably in the center) and click. You can then type your text which will wrap around the line you created with the pen tool! After your finish typing you can change the size, colour and type of font. You can use the downloaded fonts I wrote about here in this Photoshop!

After your watermark looks perfect, right click onto the picture layer on the bottom left. This will bring up a bunch of options, but you want to click the one that says "Flatten Image". You won't be able to edit the text after you flatten the image, so make sure it's perfect!

Save your image, and your watermarking is done! ^.^

I quite like using the watermarks around my cuticles because I feel like they intrude less than a corner watermark, but of course they are a little more effort!

I hope you guys enjoyed this mini tutorial! If you're living in New Zealand, don't forget to enter my giveaway! ^.^

Next week I'll be showing you how I edit my nail photos!