This tutorial is for Adobe Photoshop. If you own Photoshop Elements, here is a tutorial for you.
Batch watermarking in Photoshop is easy! Learn how.
This article will show you how to batch watermark an entire folder of photos with a transparent watermark in Photoshop. The tutorial result will look like this:
(photo copyright David Wormley)
Step 1. Find the smallest and the thinest photo in the batch. This is important due to Photoshop’s incapability to scale down watermark if it’s bigger than an photo being processed. Otherwise, you will get cropped watermarks. Open it with Photoshop.
(click on image to enlarge)
Step 2. We will need an action to perform batch watermarking in Photoshop. Open the Actions tool window, click the “Create new action” button. Enter your action name (e.g. “watermark”) and click the Record button. Photoshop will start recording all of your actions inside it. You can close the Actions pane to save some space on the screen – Photoshop will continue recording your watermarking actions.
Optionally, you may create a group for your own actions using a button on the left of the “Create new action”. This may be useful, if you have a huge amount of actions, not batch watermarking action alone.
(click on image to enlarge)
Step 3. Select the Horizontal Type Tool (shortcut “T”) and click anywhere inside the photo to add a string of text. Type any string you wish. For example, your website address is a good idea because people will be able to find you even if they lost your business card.
You can add a copyright symbol as well. On Windows hold Alt and press numbers 1, 6 and 9 on the numpad. On Mac hold Alt/Option and press g. You can find a video demonstration of typing a copyright symbol in my blog.
(click on image to enlarge)
Step 4. Click the Edit – Free Transform menu item, resize and arrange the text item. Also, you can choose the Move tool, select both layers and click the arrange buttons in the main toolbar. I prefer the later approach because it will center the watermark on every photo in a batch, even if their sizes are different.
As an alternative to selecting two layers, you may select entire picture (Ctrl+A). The arrange buttons will become enabled as well.
This step is very important for batch watermarking in Photoshop because it fixes the watermark position on every photo. Otherwise, Photoshop will put it into different places on different photos.
(click on image to enlarge)
Step 5. Select the newly created text layer and click the Layer – Layer Style – Bevel & Emboss menu item, or “fx” button at the bottom of the layers list. Layer Styles dialog will open. Default settings work in most situations, so leave them intact and click the OK button.
(click on image to enlarge)
Step 6. The Fill option on the top of the Layers window sets opacity of the layer itself and doesn’t affect layer styles. Set it to 0 to keep the bevel effect only. This will produce a nice glass-like look to the watermark.
(click on image to enlarge)
Step 7. Open the Actions pane and click the button with a black square on it. This will stop recording. Close the photo: we don’t need it anymore. It is better to discard changes because it will be watermarked anyway. It was a preparation but now we can start batch watermarking in Photoshop.
Step 8. Click the File – Automate – Batch menu item. Set the watermark group and action. Set the Source to “Folder”. Click the Choose button and select your source folder. Set the Destination to Folder. IMPORTANT: The Save & Close option will overwrite your photos. If you don’t want to loose your photos, don’t choose it. Click the Choose button and select any folder for output files. It must be a different folder, not the source folder! Click the OK button to start batch watermarking in Photoshop.
(click on image to enlarge)
Step 9. Photoshop will ask you to provide JPG quality setting for almost every photo in a batch. Set a desired quality value and click the OK button. Once the batch watermarking in Photoshop is finished, you will find your watermarked photos in the output folder.
Troubleshooting
Watermark isn’t centered on some photos. Most likely, you have skipped the Step 4 and didn’t center the watermark. Select an entire photo and use the arrange buttons in the Photoshop toolbar.
Watermark is cropped on some photos. Photoshop doesn’t scale watermarks to fit it into the photo. Select the smallest photo in a batch to design the batch watermark or use Visual Watermark – our watermarking tool. Here you can find a Visual Watermark vs Photoshop comparison.
I didn’t know that.
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Very cool! Thx
Thank you for sharing.
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I don’t think it worth spending hours in Photoshop. Modern tools like Lightroom have built-in watermarking capabilities what will work for most.
Excellent post.
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I appreciate your time on this. Thanx for sharing.
I use two methods (niether are batch but almost as quick) one is using a predefined brush, that I stamp on each image, the beauty odf this is it is easy to adjust the size and positioning. The second is using a pattern layer method, tutorial here: http://www.fatphotographer.net/links/how_to_post_process/photoshop_-_creating_a_water_mark_.html this will cover more of the image but this just makes it harder to remove.
Thanks for sharing!
I was happy that I found this post, but copyright does not work, even I push Alt+169…tried Alt+0169, too, but I got simple small cross , nothing more…Use Windows 7 Ultimate…May you help me, please.
Hmm. Please try to use Character Map application instead: http://windows.microsoft.com/en-US/windows7/Using-special-characters-Character-Map-frequently-asked-questions
It may be the font you’ve selected has no copyright symbol. Please try to use Arial or another standard font instead.
THANK you for actually taking the time to explain and to provide screen shots. Tried this many other times and every time I would mess it up because I didn’t have all the steps to follow :)
thank you found it very easy to do and I have problems reading & writting (watermarks)
Thanks for the excellent tutorial! You broke the steps down really well.
I’m curious to know if batch watermarking with an image can be automated as well?
I’ve tried the same steps as above but when it gets to the place image step stops and gives me an error. Any tips on this?
What does the error message say?
thanks for your efforts, ivan. Im on step8…what is the source folder? Is that a folder where the previous actions are stored? pressed OK and error reads: no source files that can be opened by PS . Thanks again
Source folder is a folder with your images you want to watermark.
thanks, ivan…got yourself a big new subscriber/fan here
Great article. I am wondering if there’s a way to set the output files to be jpg. I have about 100 images to watermark, but each one asks how I want to save it. I have to select .jpg as well as the quality and then the batch continues.
Most likely, you click the Save Watermark button instead of the Watermark button. You should click the Watermark button in the bottom
left corner of the program. It will start watermarking process and save your images to JPG, PNG or GIF format that you can open and use.
The Save Watermark button you clicked saves watermark template that you may use later to watermark another set of pictures. Watermark templates have a “lock” icon on them.
Where exactly is this setting in order not to have to save individual photos all the time? I cant seem to find it. Any Help?
It’s under File-Automate menu.
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Thanks for this! It was really helpful.
Do you have any idea why my watermark would show up fine on some photos and look really small on others? I purposely resized all of my pictures to be the same dimensions so that I wouldn’t have the problem of a cropped watermark, but now I’m facing the issue of Photoshop changing the size of my watermark on some photos.
Thanks!
Hi Ivan and thanx a lot so far. I work with PS CS 8.0 and maybe you have an idea for my problem: I paste my watermark as a new layer. Positioning it in the lower left corner with the arrange buttons works only when I had before link the layer to the background, otherwise those buttons are not active. Anyway this positioning step is somehow not recorded in the action list for batch processing. Any ideas? Thanks in advance!
Select the whole image (Ctrl/Cmd + A) and these buttons will become available. They also become available if you choose 2+ layers.
thank you so much for this. I had about 300 photos to apply a watermark to, and i had no time to get lightroom. Extremely useful page.