WM10

[Damien Symonds]

Extra tips for your actions

Here are some additional bits of info to help you get the most from your actions.

1. Choosing a different spot for your watermark

In the two “Fixed watermark” actions, I gave you the options of putting your watermark

But what if you want it

Spoiler

Find the Align steps

When you examine the action, you’ll see there are two “Align” steps. In this screenshot, I’ve expanded both of them, and you can see that the first one is for vertical alignment, and the second for horizontal:

Nothing to it. Just replace one or both as you wish. But it’s not quite the same as I explained on the main pages – “Record again” doesn’t work easily, so we’ll use another method.

Delete one

Choose the step you want to re-do, and delete it. In this example, I want to change the horizontal alignment, to put it in the left corner instead of the right. So I highlight the second “Align” step, and press the trash can icon …

… then say “OK” when it asks me if I’m sure:

Choose the previous step

After you delete a step in an action, it automatically highlights the step which follows it:

IMPORTANT: You must immediately highlight the step before the one you deleted. I can’t stress this enough.

In this demonstration, I deleted the second Align step, so I now select the first one.

Record the new one

Now choose “Insert Menu Item” from the submenu …

… which will give you this little dialog:

While that dialog is open, click on the Layer menu, go down to Align, and choose your new position:

Remember, I’m choosing Left in this demonstration, but you might be putting yours somewhere else.

Now you’ll have two “Align” steps in your action again, and if you expand it, it’ll confirm the new position:

Got the idea? By changing one or both of the “Align” steps, you can put your watermark in any of the other seven positions around the edge of your images.

 

2. Placing two watermarks

It’s come to my attention that some people like to place two watermarks on their images. Maybe a logo and a url, or a logo and a copyright message. No problem.

All you have to do is duplicate a portion of the steps in the action, then modify them as needed for the sizes and positions of the two watermarks.

Spoiler

In all four actions, the steps to duplicate are all the ones between (but not including) the Smart Object step and the Flatten step. Here are the screenshots:

     

Important Note

The number of steps in an action can’t exceed the number of History States in Preferences. So if you’re adding more steps to the actions this way, make sure to count the final number of steps, and ensure that you have at least that number of History States set (and a few more to be safe).

At the beginning of this process I advised at least 30 states. Maybe 40 might be safer for you.

If you don’t have enough History States, you’ll get this annoying message when you run Image Processor:

 

3. Choosing a custom watermark colour each time

Some people naively prefer using a custom brush for their watermarking. This is foolish – a brush logo can’t be batch processed. It’s a clumsy one-at-a-time job. Ain’t nobody got time fo dat.

A brush logo also can’t be multi-coloured. It can only be one colour. But some people consider this an advantage of the brush tool – they can choose any colour they like for their logo, and choose a different colour for each photo, if it suits them.

Don’t worry, you can do that in the action, too. You can have all the flexibility of choosing your preferred watermark colour, coupled with the speed of batch processing. Awesome!

Spoiler

Get ready

I suggest you completely record the rest of the action, using the steps on preceding pages, before adding this extra bit.

Open a photo, and File>Place your watermark on it, and press Enter to commit the placement. It doesn’t matter what size it is, or where it’s positioned. You just need a photo with a watermark layer.

Record the Color Overlay step

Select the step immediately before the last “Flatten Image” step in your action. It will either be “Reveal All” in the fixed actions, or “Select Free Transform menu item” in the variable actions.

Press the Record button …

… then go to the Layer menu and choose Layer Style > Color Overlay:

The default overlay colour is almost always red. If you think red will suit your watermark most of the time, you can simply press OK at this point.

However, it’s likely that red won’t suit you. So you need to click on the red swatch …

… and choose your preferred colour from the Picker:

What colour to choose? Well, in most cases you’ll choose the colour that your logo already is, I guess. Probably black, or maybe white. The goal is to pick the colour which you think you’ll use most often on your photos.

This step in the action will allow you to quickly choose a specific different colour for every individual photo, if you wish. But choosing the colour you’ll most commonly need will add extra speed to your workflow.

Once you’ve picked your colour, press OK …

… then immediately press the Stop button to cease recording:

Turn that step on

Finally, turn on the Toggle icon so that when you run the action, it will stop to allow you to choose your own colour each time.

Test it

Close that photo and open a fresh one. Run the action on it. If everything is correct, it should do all the normal steps, and stop at the Layer Style window, ready for you to choose a custom colour for your watermark.

To do so, you just click on that swatch …

… and choose your colour, either in the picker itself, or by clicking on your photo to match a specific tone.

Fast and easy!

Remember:

Any time you want to run the action without the colour change step, just turn it off: