Monday, December 17, 2012

How to Make a Watermark Using Picmonkey.com

I started using a watermark on my photos a few months ago. I just thought it might be a way to keep my photos a little safer. 

To make my watermark, I used picmonkey.com, which is a free online photo editing website. Its very easy to use... I love it!

I started out by clicking on the snowman picture.

 Once that was selected, I clicked on Overlays.

You'll want a black background for your watermark, so I just chose the Geometric Shapes and then the rectangle. I make the black rectangle big enough to cover the entire snowman picture. After that, I hit the Merge button at the top, to merge the black overlay and the snowman picture together.

Now its time to type out your watermark. Picmonkey has several fonts to choose from. I used channel for my watermark, but any font will work. 

After I've chosen my font, I type out what I want my watermark to say. I used my blog address for my watermark so that no matter where the picture ends up on the web, everyone knows where it came from. Once its typed out, I changed the font color to white so that it will show up on the black background. After that, I sized it accordingly (I made mine around a size 16) and move it to the upper left hand corner of my black background.

Now its time to crop your watermark. You'll go back to your basic edits and choose the crop tool. You'll crop your watermark to where very little background is showing.

After you have it all cropped, you'll click the save button and save it to your computer. I save mine to my desktop for easy access when editing.

Now I'll show you how to add the watermark to your photos in picmonkey. :-)

First you'll click on Edit a Photo.

Then, once you have your photo uploaded, you'll click on the overlays tool again. Then you'll click the button at the top that says Your Own.

At this point, you'll choose your saved watermark from your computer and your watermark will appear on your picture with the black background. Obviously, we don't want that black background, all we want is the white writing. So you'll use the size and color box we used before to make the black background disappear by clicking on the Blend Mode button. A drop down box will drop down and you'll want to choose the "Screen" mode. This will make the black background disappear and leave you with your white watermark.

Now you can move your watermark to any part of your picture you want. You can also size it smaller or larger if you'd like. You can also fade your watermark to make it blend in a little more with your picture. I usually fade my white watermark to about 25% depending on how dark the picture is. You can also make your watermark black instead of white, just by going back to the blend modes on your "size and color box" and instead of choosing "Screen", choose the mode right under it called "Subtract". 

And now you know how to make a watermark using picmonkey.com. ☺

I hope I've made the instructions as clear and understandable as possible. If you have any questions at all, please feel free to ask and I'll try my best to help you. ☺ I also understand that there isn't one right way to do this, so if you know of an easier way, please feel free to share it with me. ☺

Happy photo editing!!