watermarking process is a nightmare

bhockensmith

The watermarking system is a joke.
If you agree please vote for this to change here...
http://smugmug.uservoice.com/pages/17723-smugmug/suggestions/366952-watermarking-let-us-manually-place-and-resize-our-watermark-when-creating-it-




I have a full matrix of watermarks of just my name, but with different positions in the photo....ie top-left, bottom-left, bottom-right, center, etc. Then... I have doubled all those positions to handle black text and white text. THEN... I have multiplied all those again with different fade settings 20%, 40%. THEN THEN I have multiplied all those for a vertically oriented photo and a horizontally oriented one. My list is huge, confusing, and I find watermarking is my most dreaded part of my photography workflow.
horizontal_white_bottom_left_fade10
horizontal_white_bottom_right_fade10
vertical_black_top_left_fade30
...and the list goes on.
And then applying them all to the matrix of gallery thumbnails is a nightmare.
Let's be able to watermark photos INDIVIDUALLY instead of the MANY PHOTOS action. And let's be able to simply drag and position our watermark graphic and set fade settings and scaling dynamically on each photo.
That would literally save me hours!

bhockensmith

And don't change your thumbnails afterwards
I literally spent hours last night manually adding all my differently posititioned watermarks to hundreds of photos.

This morning I decided to switch my thumbnails from square to original.

That action erased all my watermarks.

Very very frustrating. Hours wasted.

Andy

I'm really sorry you are so frustrated. Yours is a case where we give you the options to get very granular, you chose it, so you have a complicated workflow. Others, do not. I guess I'm not understanding why so many watermarks?

I have two, one for landscape-oriented images:



and one for portrait-oriented images

bhockensmith

I don't make money selling digital downloads or really much from paper prints.... it the time for the shoot that pays me. So for just about all my images, I encourage people to save my XL2 and lower quality images (with watermark) and share them and post them wherever they want - as long as my watermark stays on them. It's free advertising for me. I get lot of free advertisement when my watermarked images show up in band promo sites, newsletters, facebook, myspace etc.

That being said I don't want a central or overpowering watermark that distracts from the picture enough to make people not want to use it. So I tastefully place a visable, pleasing watermark in a spot that doesn't take away from the image.

That my reasoning for wanting drag and drop watermarks.

Give me an inch and I want a mile, right? Thanks for listening.

Andy wrote:

I'm really sorry you are so frustrated. Yours is a case where we give you the options to get very granular, you chose it, so you have a complicated workflow. Others, do not. I guess I'm not understanding why so many watermarks?

I have two, one for landscape-oriented images:



and one for portrait-oriented images