In my previous post I detailed a method to place a watermark on your photos. While that method does have the advantage of making the photo unsuitable for printing it is not the method I prefer.

 I find that the copyright mark is a bit obtrusive. Fortunately I stumbled across another way to add a watermark to your photos which is a lot less obtrusive. So fire up photoshop and lets get started.

 First off I want to state that I discovered this method on a web site so it is not truly my own. I have since lost the URL (website address). So if any of you readers know of where it came please let me know so I can give the author due credit. Besides there are lots of great tutorials on that site too that I would like to read again.

1. For this method we are going to use a feature of photoshop that I rarely use. The displace
   filter. So the first thing we have to do is create a new document. Make a new RGB document 100 pixels tall by 400 pixels wide.

2. Select Edit > Fill 50% grey . The displace filter will ignore gray.





3. Now type the text you want to watermark your photo with in this document. Merge all the layers and select Filter > Stylize > Emboss, set the height to 1 and the amount to 100%.

4. Save this image as Copyright Image.psd or a file name that you will remember. This will become our displacement map.
5. Open the image you want to place the copyright mark on. Be sure that it is a copy of the original as these changes will become permanent.
6. Now select Filter > Distort > Displace . This is where you can tell photoshop how to use the displace map. If you are using a logo you can select stretch to make it cover the entire image. I almost always select Tile. Under the “Undefined Areas” I always select “Wrap Around”. Using this method I don’t think there are any undefined areas. When you click OK photoshop will ask you for your displacement map. Point it to the file we just made.

7. Now your watermark may be a little difficult to see (which is what we wanted). But if you zoom in to a section you should be able to see it. You may have to play with the scale to find a size that best suites your photos. If it is too big you undo it and then use the displace filter again changing the scale.

8. From here you can go to the File Menu and select File Info and enter your information like we did in the previous post.
9. If you like this method then I highly recommend making it into an action. That way you can use it for batch processing of multiple images.

 Here is the finished copyright photo. I find this to be my method of choice for photos that I post to the web.

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