How to Make a Watermark SmugMug
One of the many benefits and premium features of a SmugMug Pro account is the ability for photographers to add watermark images to the photos in their galleries. A watermark allows you to display a photo in its original size, so that potential buyers can see the full details and quality at the size you intended. But since a watermark image partially covers or distorts part of the image, it also protects your original work from any potential theft. With a SmugMug Pro account, you can create, upload and add your watermark to any image or gallery in your SmugMug portfolio.
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Instructions
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Create your watermark image in your favorite image-editing software, such as PaintShop Pro, Photoshop CE or Photoshop Elements. You must open a new image with a transparent background, add the desired text, logo and copyright notices. Then save it to your hard drive as a transparent PNG file.
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Log in to your SmugMug account and visit your homepage dashboard, which you can find at yourusername.smugmug.com.
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Click the "Upload" button in the menu across the top of your dashboard, then upload your watermark image to the appropriate gallery. Ensure that you don't select any options in the upload process that hide your image; hiding the image won't allow SmugMug to overlay your watermark onto publicly displayed images. However, if you don't want visitors to your SmugMug galleries to see your watermark image, add it to an unlisted gallery.
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Navigate to your watermark image in your SmugMug gallery.
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Click the "Tools" button in the upper right corner of the screen to open the drop-down menu of options for your watermark image.
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Hover your mouse over the "More" tab under the "This Photo" section of the drop-down menu. A sub-menu opens to the right of the drop-down menu.
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Click "Make Into Watermark" in the sub-menu.
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Type a name for your watermark image in the "Name" field. Since SmugMug allows you to upload an unlimited number of watermark images, naming your watermark helps you easily identify it when applying watermarks.
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Click the "Yes" button next to the "Thumbs?" field if you would like SmugMug to apply your watermark to thumbnail images as well as the larger versions. If you don't want your image thumbnails to have watermarks, click "No".
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Select where you'd like your watermark to appear on your images from the drop-down menu next to "Location". Your watermark can appear in the center of the image, in one of its four corners, or centered top, bottom, left or right.
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Slide the green dot to the left or right on the "Fade" slider to make your watermark more or less transparent on your image. You can see a preview of the watermark's transparency directly beneath the "Fade" slider.
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Click the "Submit" button to turn your image into a watermark, once you're satisfied with the way the watermark will look.
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Navigate to the gallery in your SmugMug account that contains the photos you want to watermark.
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Click "Tools" in the upper-right menu. A drop-down menu appears.
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Hover your mouse over the "More" tab in the "Many Photos" section of the drop-down menu under "Tools" then select "Watermarking".
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Click the images you'd like to watermark to select them. To select all the images in the gallery for watermarking, click the "Select All" button to the right of the "Watermark" section.
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Select your watermark image by name in the drop-down "Watermark" menu, then click the "Watermark" button on the far right in the same row. The page redirects to a confirmation page notifying you that SmugMug is watermarking your images. This process may take a few seconds to a few minutes.
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Tips & Warnings
SmugMug has a few standard watermark images you can use if you don't want to design your own. Visit the sample watermark image gallery on SmugMug and click the thumbnail of the watermark you'd like to use. Hover your mouse over the larger preview of the image on the right, then click the icon of the folder with a green downward-pointing arrow at the bottom of the sub-menu that appears on the photo. Follow the on-screen instructions to download the watermark image to your hard drive, then follow the remaining steps in this article to upload the image to your SmugMug account for use as a watermark.
If you create your own watermark image, you can make it any size you want. However, the best way to ensure that your watermark looks the same on any size image you upload to SmugMug is to create your watermark to be 1600 by 1600 pixels. This is the largest size image you can upload and SmugMug will downsize your watermark to fit any image larger than 800 pixels on its longest side, so creating your watermark image to the same dimensions ensures that it looks just as sharp on large images as it does on smaller ones.
You can easily remove a watermark from any of your images by following the same process to watermark them, selecting the images you want to remove the watermark, then clicking the "Remove" radio button in the watermarking menu. Click the "Watermark" button on the far right to submit your changes.
You can only watermark images whose original size is 800 pixels or larger on its longest side.
Only SmugMug Pro accounts or above can watermark their original images. If you have only a basic account, you can't watermark your original image using SmugMug. You can either watermark your images prior to uploading them by overlaying your watermark over the images in your favorite image-editing software, or you can limit the image size your SmugMug galleries display to a smaller version. In this way, viewers can't download your original-size image.
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- Photo Credit Jupiterimages/Goodshoot/Getty Images
