Protecting your work with some sort of watermarked copyright symbol that prevents the images being used elsewhere is common practice in the world of photography. While no protection is fool proof, a well placed “ownership” message can stop others form using your layouts and photographs for purposes you did not intend.
On a layout, you may wish to use a more unobtrusive mark to prevent the message from spoiling the design, while on a photograph a larger mark is more appropriate.
Create a new canvas as 2 inch by 2 inch square 300ppi.
Choose the Custom Shape Tool
On the Options Bar make sure that the Fill pixels option is selected on the toolbar. Load the Symbols Shape category if necessary and choose the © symbol image.
Hold down the SHIFT key to maintain the proportions and click and drag the bottom right hand corner to create the image.
To add your own details we need to create a circular path
Create a new layer by selecting the Create a New Layer icon on the layer palette
Choose Eliptical Marquee Selection Tool, hold down the SHIFT key to maintain proportion and create a circle to sit within the symbol – if required use Select> Transform Selection to position the circle appropriately.
Switch to the Path Tab on the layer palette, and click the Make Work Path from Selection icon
Select the Text Tool, you can use any font you like, here Arial at 12pt has been selected. Click at the top of the path and type in your message – keep it simple so it is easy to read.
Deselect the Work and text Path and switch back to the Layers tab
Right click a layer and choose Merge visible to create a single image. (A solid color new layer has then been added here to make the changes easier to see.)
Right click the layer and choose Blending Options
Select Bevel and Emboss and choose a setting that adds a soft bevel to the symbol and words. Here I have used
Inner bevel; Smooth; Depth 231; Size 1; Soften 3 and left the rest of the settings as the default.
Now switch to the Default view and reduce the Fill Opacity to 0
As a final step right click the watermark layer and choose Group into New Smart Object and then right click again and choose Rasterize Layer. This preserves the image with the layer effects intact.
Save this watermark to use as required by dragging it onto your layout, or photograph. You can adjust the watermarks opacity, or blending mode, and size as required. On the layout below created for the Sketch Byte Column in this issue I have added the watermark to the photo where it is least intrusive to the overall design. Adding it to a photo I am more concerned about ensuring that watermark cannot easily be removed so I have placed it centrally to the image in an area that would be less easy to remove by means of a clone tool or similar, but still allows the viewer to see the photo clearly
**First published in Tidbytes March 2007**
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