Watermark and copyright notices are something that everyone should use, especially if you are on Flickr. Naturally you want to put copyright information in the files themselves too. I haven’t been putting this information on my images in the form of a watermark until now because I didn’t know of an easy way to incorporate this into my workflow.
Lucky for me I recently came across Timothy Armes’ LR/2 Mogrify plugin for Lightroom 2 (it works on Windows and Mac). In order to use this on a Windows machine, you also need to download ImageMagick, a useful program I have used in the past in a LAMP environment for web applications. Lastly, you need a transparent PNG image to use as your watermark. The image I used for the photo above is at 30% opacity in Photoshop. If you don’t know how to create a transparent PNG image in Photoshop for watermarking purposes, I highly recommend Heather’s Watermark Tutorial.
My images typically start out between 7-9MB in size. Typical dimensions are 3648×2736 in size. Because of this, and wanting to ensure the watermark was visible, I made my watermark 200px tall. YMMV, but this works for me. If you are exporting to Facebook with the Friedl Plugin, you will likely need to adjust your settings substantially from what you use for Flickr. Just make sure you use Presets to save your settings for each type.
Once you have the file completed, it is a simple matter of using the plugin via Lightroom (after you have added it of course). The plugin gives you 9 base reference points you can anchor the plugin to, and then you can offset the placement in both the vertical and horizontal planes. You will have to experiment for a bit to see what works for you. One option you will see is whether or not you want to put the watermark on the image before you create any borders, or after. If you aren’t using borders, you can ignore this. I have seen some examples of incorporating the watermark/ logo into the border. Take a look and see if you like it.
Adding borders can be a bit confusing the first time you do it. At least it was for me. I thought that as you add numbers, you were working from the inside out. This means that the highest number would be the innermost frame, at least in my mind. It didn’t turn out to be the case though. Border 1 is always the innermost border. For my standard template, Border 1 is 15px all the way around and black. Border 2 is also 15px all the way around, and is white. Border 3 is the big one, at 30px all the way around and black in color. To me it gives images a nice framed and matted look. I only do this for the photos that get uploaded to Flickr and Facebook. Anything going to photos.chesterbullock.com (Zenfolio) gets no treatment, as I want the prints to be printed in original form without the borders and watermarks.
One thing to be careful of with the LR2/Mogrify tools – if you export later for a different purpose, make sure you disable the LR2/ Mogrify plugin. It stays on by default all the time in the Export window, and you could export something with edits you don’t mean to.
I truly wish I had come across this useful utility sooner. I am just very thankful I came across it at all.
Nik Software produces some pretty cool tools. Even better, they announced today that they are offering up to 50% off for students through a new educational pricing program. As the parent of a college student who also enjoys photography and all of the post production possibilities that shooting digital offers, I appreciate what they are doing.
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Why I Continue to be a Smugmug Pro User
I have now been a SmugMug Pro user since November. Prior to that, I used a competing site called Zenfolio (for one year). I fully intend to renew my Smugmug Pro site once it comes up for renewal. The key features they were lacking versus their competitors are now available (namely coupons and packages), but this is not the only reason I’ll still be here.
The one thing that continues to set SmugMug apart from the rest of the serious image hosting companies is their commitment to their customers. Sure, they are privately held with no debt load, so sometimes features are slower to appear than at a VC funded competitor. However, this creates an environment where they are only adding things that are essential to the Pro user, and they only do it if it really makes sense. No knee jerk reactions to odd requests, or doing things just because they can. The end result is an ongoing financially viable service that won’t disappear out of the blue someday (without warning no doubt). In fact, they also provide an easy to use and democratic method to submit feature requests.
The commitment to customers is carried over to customer support as well. They truly are fanatical about this. In fact, I think the only other company I have dealt with that is comparable is ExactTarget (an email service provider). SmugMug will respond to you extremely quickly via email for any support requests you might have. And they are actually pretty quick to respond on their message forums as well, although that is not the official channel (seriously, if you have an immediate support need, email, don’t go to the forum). The General Manager, Andy Williams, is generally the first person to respond to posts in the forum, and provides great insight for why items are or are not possible.
The last place that this commitment to customers is so evident is the creation of the SmugMug User Groups (SMUGs). These events are actually open to any photographer or videographer, but the conversations at times can be of direct benefit to SmugMug users (such as in the Denver meeting last December when feedback was solicited about the coupon and package systems). So many companies toss up a forum or a Facebook page and call it done. I love that SmugMug is sponsoring these in person gatherings. Paralleling my experiences with ExactTarget at Connections (I cannot sing their praises enough), a SMUG meeting is a great way to get feedback on your thoughts, as well as make your voice heard to the people who are really involved with this company. That in itself is priceless.
Customer service isn’t the only reason to stay with a company of course. The whole reason for having images hosted by a site like SmugMug is the ability to sell them. People who have purchased my prints have been quite pleased by the final product quality. Fulfillment by Bay Photo (one of two choices SmugMug Pro users have) has been flawless. When you couple this fact with the customer service commitment I see, that is the reason I do not need to look anywhere else – nor should you.
If you have been looking at similar services, or if you belong to one and have been thinking about moving, I would encourage you to take the SmugMug 14 day free trial. All features are active during the trial, so you will be able to get a real feel for how it will fit with your needs. You won’t be sorry you did.
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