How to Put a Copyright on Your Image

Embossing | Picture Shark | Creating an Action in PhotoShop

Free Tutorial

We're writing an e-book, A Photographer's Guide to Web Site Design, which will be available January 31, 2003. The e-book will also include several tutorials which show you step-by-step how certain things can be done. We're now offering the first of these tutorials - Add a Copyright to Your Image. Look for the 2nd Edition of A Photographer's Guide to Web Site Design and this article Fall 2006.

Embossing Your Copyright in PhotoShop

One of the many options that photographers use in the attempt to protect their images online is by stamping their image with either a copyright symbol (©) or their logo. I feel the embossing tool in PhotoShop is the most professional way to do this. If you plan to stamp several of your images, be sure to record this as an Action or save the layer that you create for use on another image.

1. Open the image you want to stamp.
2. Create a new layer with either © or your logo. In this example I use the Lucid Images logo.
3. Select the logo/© layer and choose "Load Selection" from the Select menu and choose the logo/© layer.
4. Select Gaussian Blur filter and select a Radius setting of 4, press OK
5. Next, choose Emboss from the Stylize menu of Filter. Enter an Angle of 135, a Height of 4 pixels & an Amount of 200 percent. Press OK.
6. Make sure your logo/© layer is still selected. Select Hard Light from the Blend Mode list on the Layers palette.
7. Adjust the transparency of the logo/© until it creates the effect you want.
8. Select "Save For Web".

Note: To type the copyright symbol © on the PC hold down the ALT key and type "0169" on the numeric keypad. On the MAC hold down the ALT/OPTION key and press "g".

Picture-shark

I recently discovered a great product that could save you a lot of time. Picture-shark will "stamp" visible logos or text on your images. For those of you who don't have PhotoShop or would like to be able to batch "stamp" several images at once, Picture-shark is a great little product. Whether you want to use your logo or your signature (which you've scanned in and saved as a transparent gif file) Picture-shark is a nice little tool. Best of all, it's Free!

Creating a Copyright Action in PhotoShop

I have designed numerous websites for nature and wildlife photographers. One of the most important and time-consuming aspects of designing sites for photographers is image preparation. If a client sends me 100 images which need the copyright added and thumbnails created, it could take hours to complete the job. Creating an Action (macro) in PhotoShop greatly speeds up the process of adding copyrights to the images.

Important: Always work with a copy of your original image! It's best to have a separate working directory and keep your original image on another hard drive to prevent any accidental changes.

The following steps assume you would like to place your copyright in the bottom-right portion of the image. It also assumes you have already edited (rotated, cropped, adjusted levels, sharpened...) your images and they reside in a separate working directory.

Creating an Action in PhotoShop

1. Click "Create New Set" in the Action panel
2. Name the action: Copyrights
3. Click "Create New Action"
4. Name this according to the photographer and what color text you are using i.e. Jan A. Allinder [white]
5. Open the image
6. Verify the image is rotated properly and is the correct image size.
7. Start Recording your Action
8. Select the Text tool, font, font size & font color (in this example - white)
9. Click anywhere on the image and enter your copyright
   (Copyright Symbol: PC Users - ALT+0169 -> use numeric keypad; MAC Users - OPTION + G) i.e. © Jan A. Allinder
10. Choose Select > All
11. Choose Layer > Align to Selection > Bottom Edges
12. Choose Layer > Align to Selection > Right Edges
13. Choose Select > Deselect
14. Select the Move tool (Make sure the Type layer is selected)
15. Holding down the Shift key and using the arrow buttons, click on the Left arrow twice and the Up arrow twice
16. Depending upon how you would like to save your image...
    • If you would like to save the image with layers, chose File>Save & click save. This will save your image as a PhotoShop (PSD) image in the same directory as the original image
    • If you would like to save your image as a JPG image, chose Layer>Flatten Image and then choose File>Save. NOTE: This will overwrite your original JPG image
    • If you would like to save your image for the web, chose File>Save for Web. NOTE: With this option, when you run in batch mode, you'll be prompted to enter a file name for each and every image
17. Stop Recording your Action.

You can now use your new Copyright action script on any image you open in PhotoShop. You can also use it to batch process all the images in your working directory. Processed images should go to the appropriate image directory.

1. Select File>Automate>Batch
2. Select your Set and your Action. (Copyrights - Jan A. Allinder [white])
3. In the Source drop-down selection choose Folder
4. Click on Choose and select your working image folder
5. In the Destination drop-down selection choose Folder
6. Click on Choose and select your processed image folder (i.e. images)
7. Click OK and your images all of the images in your working folder will be processed and saved to your image folder.

Learning how to use PhotoShop's Actions can be a tremendous help to folks who do a lot of repetitive work. There are quite a few websites where you can download Actions for PhotoShop.

• PhotoShop Action http://www.liknes.no/photoshop/tutorials.htm
• GFX PhotoShop Tutorials http://user.fundy.net/morris/redirect.html?photoshop147.shtml
• PhotoShop Studio http://share.studio.adobe.com/Default.asp

Copyright © 2004 Jan A. Allinder. All Rights Reserved.