Creating a Watermark in Aperture

A necessary item to have in your photograph when placing it anywhere, print or web, is a watermark.  It helps brand your photography as well as deter people from stealing your photograph to use for their own gain.

If you are using Apple Aperture, it can be a little confusing how to do such a task.  But its not all that difficult in the end.





First, create whatever graphic or text that you want to have displayed on your image.  Dont make it so large that it makes your image ugly.  I have something simple.

The important part of doing this is that you need to have the background transparent.  In order to do this, use Photoshop.  Create your graphic in a separate layer from the background layer.  After your graphic is designed and looks amazing, click on your background layer and "select all"  then delete it.  You will have a graphic with no background at all.  Then you save it as a png.  This will keep your transparency.

Ok, so now that its done.

Go into Aperture then right click any image to bring up your dialogue box.  Go to Export and then Versions.

Once there, you will see a new window pop up. It will look like this.

Go ahead and click on the "export preset" and then select "edit".  

You will see this little window popup now.

Now an important part of this is to make sure you select which export you want to have for your watermark.  For exports that I send to my clients, I dont want it to have a watermark.  So select that.  Then click the little box that says "show watermark"

When you do this you hit the button that says "choose image."  You then find the image that you previously created.   

After this select where you want it to be.  Do you want it in the center?  The top?  Its up to you.  I have mine at the bottom left.  

For my images, I do not have the "scale watermark" selected.  I have the watermark set to a certain size but you might want to try it out to see what fits best for you.

After this, lower your opacity.  You dont want the image to be ruined by your watermark, you just want it there as a subtle reminder of who you are.  Opacity of 50% is pretty good, but play around with it of course.

After that, hit ok and then export your image how you like it.  Do a few tests to see what works best for you.