How do I change the Watermark?

Ken CCP

From all my reading this has been a request for over two years, so I am assuming since opensource free stuff does it, I am just being silly in not finding a way to do this. It can't possbily take two+ years to change the line of code that grabs the "Proof" image to one that grabs an image defined as a gallery setting.

• Create a new object in the gallery object model or even the subscriber object model. It would be nice to have a watermark per gallery, but even one per account would be a major win.
• Check the image when saved as watermark to make sure it is valid.
• Call the new object on upload vs calling the hard coded link to the "Proof" image.

So how do I create a custom watermark?

Honestly, I am very near canceling my trial pro account over this one delayed feature. Which is too bad because the rest of the system seems very nice.

Thanks

devbobo

Hi Ken,

Sorry to hear that the lack of a custom watermark feature is an issue. I know that this has been discussed previously. Andy would normally address this kind of thing, but since he is away at the dgrin shootout...he probably won't see it for a few days.

Cheers,

David

Ken CCP

Thanks,

I am going to stay, but for now have to choose between only showing small versions or having that one BIG ULGY Watermark.

Before SmugMug offers a larger size, lets fix the sizes we have with custom watermark.

I will be patient for an answer since I have decided to use the service for now.

Andy

Hi Ken,

Thanks for posting, and telling us how important this is to you. For now, you cannot do a custom watermark on your own, and still have the Originals available for watermark-free printing.

We know that you guys want this feature, our engineers know it, too. I wish I had a definite answer on when this would be available, but I don't. I hope, it's soon.

Pezpix

FWIW, I used to use fotopic.net for hosting and they had a customizable watermark that they offered. But of course, since it is a European site, it did me little good as a pro when I needed to set prices for my work. That is why Smugmug got my nod. Here's to hoping the engineers can find a cool way to let us customize watermarks. Cheers!

Also, as an alternative Ken, you could always custom make your own watermark as a proof and then direct your customers to the link to purchase the actual unaltered print. I know its kind of a pain, but it is a good alternative. Good luck!

Cammo

How do Photoshelter do their "proof"? They allow you to upload a semi-transparent .png file that you can create yourself and that is placed over all your lo-res images on their site. Well, something like that anyway :

Cammo

Ken CCP

Pezpix wrote:

Also, as an alternative Ken, you could always custom make your own watermark as a proof and then direct your customers to the link to purchase the actual unaltered print. I know its kind of a pain, but it is a good alternative. Good luck!

I thought about that. I guess I could even link to another print provider I have used

Andy, Good answer to my expressed frustration.. Soon is better than we have it on the list... Thanks!!!

mercphoto

Cammo wrote:

How do Photoshelter do their "proof"? They allow you to upload a semi-transparent .png file that you can create yourself and that is placed over all your lo-res images on their site. Well, something like that anyway :

Exposure Manager has an option like that. You upload a JPG, you set the transparancy and voila, custom water-mark. Or, you can simply enter a line of text, choose a transparancy, and voila.

C_lawgik

Not having a custom watermark is really my only complaint to smugmug. This is a probelm we need to get resolved.

evergreen25

I agree on the need for custom watermarking - hope the engineers at SmugMug are able to get this figured out soon. The summer wedding season is upon us and I really wish I could use a custom watermark that didn't obscure so much of the original! I think it would help me sell more prints (and this would mean more money both for me and SmugMug).

dlobel

FYI...

So does Exposure Manager. They allow you to upload a customer watermark file per gallery. You can set it's placement, opacity and width. You can also create custom text instead of am image.

Cammo wrote:

How do Photoshelter do their "proof"? They allow you to upload a semi-transparent .png file that you can create yourself and that is placed over all your lo-res images on their site. Well, something like that anyway :

Cammo

dlobel

And to be fair to SM...
And to be fair to SM, it's possible they are working on it, but aren't commenting. Standard and fair practice not to mention a feature until it is released....but for more than two years?

dlobel wrote:

FYI...

So does Exposure Manager. They allow you to upload a customer watermark file per gallery. You can set it's placement, opacity and width. You can also create custom text instead of am image.

Andy

dlobel wrote:

And to be fair to SM, it's possible they are working on it, but aren't commenting. Standard and fair practice not to mention a feature until it is released....but for more than two years?

Yeah. Give it to us, Dave - I hope to be able to get our product manager and engineers do do something about this.

dlobel

Hey Andy,

Thanks for the quick response. Though not sure how I'm supposed to interpret that response....

Hope all is well with you...

-Dave-

Andy wrote:

Yeah. Give it to us, Dave - I hope to be able to get our product manager and engineers do do something about this.

Andy

dlobel wrote:

Hey Andy,

Thanks for the quick response. Though not sure how I'm supposed to interpret that response....

Hope all is well with you...

-Dave-

I mean, keep up the pressure - it's great to hear from you and all our pros. Sorry, I didn't mean to sound cute or anything, I just meant, keep on us, it's important.

dlobel

No worries, Andy.

Check your "MAC" account...

Andy wrote:

I mean, keep up the pressure - it's great to hear from you and all our pros. Sorry, I didn't mean to sound cute or anything, I just meant, keep on us, it's important.

SamirD

mercphoto wrote:

Exposure Manager has an option like that. You upload a JPG, you set the transparancy and voila, custom water-mark. Or, you can simply enter a line of text, choose a transparancy, and voila.

I've actually signed onto EM because of this. I just haven't had enough time to experiment with it and change all my workflow from SM to EM.

The FTP upload capability is also a big plus. Opening multiple StarExplorers or Send to Smugmugs is driving me crazy and wasting valuable time.

Ken CCP

SamirD wrote:

I've actually signed onto EM because of this. I just haven't had enough time to experiment with it and change all my workflow from SM to EM.

The FTP upload capability is also a big plus. Opening multiple StarExplorers or Send to Smugmugs is driving me crazy and wasting valuable time.

This is my impression, EM is nipping hard at Smugmugs heels on pro features.
I would probably be changing today but with the odd workaround of creating a prints for sale gallery with small images to echo my personal display with proper watermark the one feature keeping me here now is the customer cropping tool.

I will be watching EM for that one feature, because the idea setting up many of my images twice is a PAIN !! Only worse is having to custom crop my images to all aspect ratios I can sell.

Andy's last answer concerns me about "getting them to work on it" I would have prefered to have it read "getting them to finish it" I really hope this feature is well in the coding phase after two years of people asking for it.

Techman1

I'm coming up on a full year now with Smugmug and have been overall pleased with the service and support. Unfortunately, one of the first things I was looking for was Custom Watermarking. It's been a year now and it seems to have gone from it's on our list, to we are going to put some pressure on our development team. There have been many positive things here which have occurred in the past year. All of us Pro Account customers have benefitted in one way or another, but I would sure like to know if the following is going to occur in 2006:

(1) Custom Watermarking
(2) Back Printing from EZPrints (like they do for others)
(3) Email notification of sales (without having to check every day)
(4) FTP uploads to SM (without having to pay a 3rd party)
(5) Order Status to include cropping info (was an image cropped or not by our customers)

I think that it's for now. I'm hoping to stay with SM for the next year, but am looking currently at other options just in case. Hopefully someone (Andy?) within SM can comment on whether any/all of these can be expected anytime this year.

Thanks in advance and sorry if this has come off as negative (I really am happy with SM, but the competition out there is knocking at the door with lots of options for us pros).

Take care all!
Fred

Ken CCP wrote:

This is my impression, EM is nipping hard at Smugmugs heels on pro features.
I would probably be changing today but with the odd workaround of creating a prints for sale gallery with small images to echo my personal display with proper watermark the one feature keeping me here now is the customer cropping tool.

I will be watching EM for that one feature, because the idea setting up many of my images twice is a PAIN !! Only worse is having to custom crop my images to all aspect ratios I can sell.

Andy's last answer concerns me about "getting them to work on it" I would have prefered to have it read "getting them to finish it" I really hope this feature is well in the coding phase after two years of people asking for it.

Andy

Techman1 wrote:

(1) Custom Watermarking
(2) Back Printing from EZPrints (like they do for others)
(3) Email notification of sales (without having to check every day)
(4) FTP uploads to SM (without having to pay a 3rd party)
(5) Order Status to include cropping info (was an image cropped or not by our customers)

Fred, we can't and don't make comments on what's in our dev queue. I'm sorry but we just don't. I can tell you that 1,2,3 are very very important to us and we're trying hard to make them happen. I have no promises on if/when.

4 is not on our radar - lots of pros use and love the *very* robust star explorer www.starexplorer.com

5 - thanks for that, it's interesting and I'll ask to see if it's do-able.

Cheers,

Techman1

Andy,

Thank you as always for the quick reply. I realize that you don't comment on the development queue and schedule. I'm glad to hear that at least 1-3 are very important. I am surprised that you won't comment on whether they are "ever" going to be developed and/or incorporated at Smugmug (the word "if" is what I am referring to).

I suspect you meant to link: www.starexplorer.com on your reply. I did test it previously, but really didn't want to purchase yet another piece of software. I have purchased several FTP programs and would hope that this might be on Smugmug's agenda/schedule somewhere down the road.

Thanks for considering number 5 on my list. I couldn't remember if I had asked for this previously as a feature, but I know that I often ask my customers if they had cropped a specific image as I don't really have any way of knowing if they did or did not.

Anyway, thanks again. I guess I will need decide how important these features are in my consideration of continuing with SM or possibly moving to another provider.

Best regards,
Fred

Andy

Techman1 wrote:

Anyway, thanks again. ...

Thank YOU for telling us like it is, and how important all this is to you!

dogwood

i like these ideas too

Techman1 wrote:

(1) Custom Watermarking
(2) Back Printing from EZPrints (like they do for others)
(3) Email notification of sales (without having to check every day)
(4) FTP uploads to SM (without having to pay a 3rd party)
(5) Order Status to include cropping info (was an image cropped or not by our customers)

#4 isn't so important to me personally, but I really like the other requests. Just tossin' my two-cents (which according to the treasury, these days costs about three-cents to produce) into the ring!

SamirD

Techman1 wrote:

I'm coming up on a full year now with Smugmug and have been overall pleased with the service and support. Unfortunately, one of the first things I was looking for was Custom Watermarking. It's been a year now and it seems to have gone from it's on our list, to we are going to put some pressure on our development team. There have been many positive things here which have occurred in the past year. All of us Pro Account customers have benefitted in one way or another, but I would sure like to know if the following is going to occur in 2006:

(1) Custom Watermarking
(2) Back Printing from EZPrints (like they do for others)
(3) Email notification of sales (without having to check every day)
(4) FTP uploads to SM (without having to pay a 3rd party)
(5) Order Status to include cropping info (was an image cropped or not by our customers)

I think that it's for now. I'm hoping to stay with SM for the next year, but am looking currently at other options just in case. Hopefully someone (Andy?) within SM can comment on whether any/all of these can be expected anytime this year.

Thanks in advance and sorry if this has come off as negative (I really am happy with SM, but the competition out there is knocking at the door with lots of options for us pros).

Take care all!
Fred

I really hate to say this, but I've actually signed on with Exposure Manager for quite a while now. I haven't had a chance to explore their system at all due to my current workload, but it has the ability to handle 1 and 4 for sure. That's why I signed up. Plus, they still have all of SM's great features, or so the list says. I've yet to be able to test it for myself. But if it was successful, I wouldn't probably be with SM anymore. :cry

If you don't want to use starexplorer, try using send to smugmug. I upload literally thousands of photos each week and found STSM better than SE because of how long it would take SE to load my gallery and album information. Plus, using STSM, I can break a batch into multiple sessions on the same computer, maximizing the amout of throughput. Of course, using FTP via Filezilla would solve that headache...

Hope some of this helps.

Dunker

Custom Watermarking
I upgraded to a pro account today strictly for the watermarking feature. I did not do any research on how the watermark looks, I assumed I would have some control as to the words or appearance. I am unhappy with the giant PROOF across the entire image and I am not sure if I am going to even use it since it is so dominating on the images.

I would really like to see a customizable watermark, until then I will downgrade back to power user since right now I don't really have any use for the other features of a PRO account.

I'll be watching for the custom watermarking and will re-upgrade again at that time.

Andy

Dunker wrote:

I upgraded to a pro account today strictly for the watermarking feature. I did not do any research on how the watermark looks, I assumed I would have some control as to the words or appearance. I am unhappy with the giant PROOF across the entire image and I am not sure if I am going to even use it since it is so dominating on the images.

I would really like to see a customizable watermark, until then I will downgrade back to power user since right now I don't really have any use for the other features of a PRO account.

I'll be watching for the custom watermarking and will re-upgrade again at that time.

Thanks for telling us how important this is to you, Dunker.

Dunker

Andy wrote:

Thanks for telling us how important this is to you, Dunker.

No problem. I'm looking forward to the new custom watermark feature and I will re-upgrade as soon as it's available. Until then I really dont have any use for the rest of the features (although I hope to someday), and the $70 bucks (upgrad fee) is better served in my wallet...

uncx1

I know it has been said before and I know the answer is that it is in the works, but I just wanted to say I am also EAGERLY awaiting a customizable watermark. At the very least being able to change the position or size of the word "proof" and of course would love to be able to write something else besides proof. Here's to hoping this can get done sooner rather than later!

SamirD

In case anyone here doesn't know yet, custom watermarks are here!