Adding a signature to all my pictures

T
Posted By
thablakester
Nov 5, 2006
Views
238
Replies
9
Status
Closed
Hey everyone! i’m pretty new to the whole photoshop cs2 experience, so please be nice 🙂 I have several thousand pictures and I would like to add a personal signature/washout icon to every one of them at the bottom right hand side just like professional photographers do. I’m worried that someone will try to steal my work and i won’t be able to get credit for it if i’m ever "discovered" for something i’ve done. I’ve tried working with recording an action and pasting something in at the bottom and then saving the file, then stopping the action. Whenever I do this, PS tries to save the file as a "copy". I would first of all like to save the original with the signature added in, then transfer that action to every picture I have.

Is there a simpler way to do this than what i’m trying and/or is there an easy way to copyright my work without having to have a signature/personal icon in the way? Thanks!!!

blake

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P
Phosphor
Nov 5, 2006
Watch the following QT movie.

It’ll explain it all.

<http://av.adobe.com/russellbrown/BrandingSM.mov>
T
thablakester
Nov 5, 2006
thanks a LOT!!! that video was [bleep] hilarious! but i do have one question… whenever i do the 2nd step (setting the image size resolution), will that change the actual image size of every one of my pictures? almost all of my shots are 2816×2112 resolution and I don’t want to lose any of that large caliber whenever I make this change. I may be WAAAY off base by asking this, but I don’t know any better. Thanks again!
C
chrisjbirchall
Nov 5, 2006
I would first of all like to save the original with the signature added

Do you really want to do that? What if you one day need to sell an image to a client who needs it for publication without a signature?

Whatever edits you do in Photoshop, you should always work on a copy, leaving the original unscathed.
T
thablakester
Nov 5, 2006
thats very true, however thats saying that i’ll have to make copies of about 3,000 pictures. but then again, I guess I should only brand only the ones i really think can be sold for cash one day. i just don’t want to take ANY chances that someone could steal my work. I know how a lot of people are and if a con artist sees a shot of mine and makes a lot of money off it and i can’t proove it’s mine then i’m in trouble. Know what i mean?

any ideas on the 2nd question regarding changing the resolution mentioned in the video? thanks again guys!
C
chrisjbirchall
Nov 5, 2006
thats saying that i’ll have to make copies of about 3,000 pictures

Well you could leave your back-up set in their original form… Erm: You do have a back-up set, don’t you?

don’t want to take ANY chances that someone could steal my work

If the answer to my back-up question is "no", then your next HDD crash will do just that!
RK
Rob_Keijzer
Nov 5, 2006
Set the Copyright info in the IPTC fields for your master images, not in the body of the image, because (as Chris has pointed out) if you need one for publication you’d have to clone out your own signature!

Besides, your marking/branding of an image is a just a notification (or a reminder) to others that your work is copyright. It is not automatically "public domain" if it’s missing. Photos are only PD when explicitly labeled as such.

Rob
B
Bernie
Nov 5, 2006
i can’t proove it’s mine then i’m in trouble. Know what i mean?

Keeping the RAW files will go a long way towards proving you shot the image. as is keeping a file with all the layers if you did some heavy duty retouching.

Remember, the con man could always clone out your name and put his in its place, thus this is a worthless way of proving the image is yours. As mentioned prevously, it is only a reminder that the image is copyrighted.
RB
Robert_Barnett
Nov 5, 2006
For some reason Adobe doesn’t include any tools, scripts or otherwise to do this. I have tried doing it with batch processing and an action, but it only works on some of the images and if you have images that are different orientations, different sizes, etc. it becomes a real mess.

I hope/wish that with CS3 that adobe adds a tool or automatte plug-in or expand the batch processing tool to do this and do it well. It should work with text and graphics (including transparent graphics) and it should be smart enough to handle different sizes, orientations and anything else that can mess this up.

In the meantime I use a shareware program called Photo Watermark Professional. It works quite well, it is easy to use and very powerful. http://www.photowatermark.com/ There are also other programs available, but I like this one the best.

Robert
RB
Robert_Barnett
Nov 5, 2006
Unfortunately, I have tried that technique and it doesn’t work with all types of images (sizes, orientations, resolution, etc.). This was the first technique I tried because I like Russell Brown. But, this just doesn’t work for all images.

Robert

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