Pixplug Help

Watermarking Photos
The Professional account membership allows you to watermark your photos. If you have a Professional account membership you will be able to access the Watermarking features offered by Pixplug.

Site Manager > Site Settings > Watermark Options
On this page you can configure the watermarking that is applied to any albums you setup to utilize watermarks. You can either create your own custom watermark or use the default watermark offered by our system. We have created a watermark template

Step One: Go to the Site Manager > Site Settings > Watermarking Options page.

Step Two: Look for the blue link that says Download Photoshop Watermark Template Here and click on this link:

After you click the link you will see a download file window appear:

Click the Save button and then download the file to your computer and open it in Photoshop.

Step Three: We designed the template with the font Arial Black which is found on most Windows computers. If you don't have this font installed on your system Photoshop may prompt you to replace the font or may warn you that the font is not available on your system. This is fine if this happens as you can easily select the type and change it to another font. The template is simply a guide that helps you save your watermark out at the right size and will give you a starting point to work from.

Step Four: After you have opened the Watermark Template in Photoshop you will see that we created it with a Photoshop Layer Effect using a Drop Shadow and Bevel and Emboss. We also set the transparency for the layer at 65%. The font is white. The end result of using these settings is a watermark that is easily seen on both dark and light areas of a photo and is difficult to remove as it is semi-transparent and uses blended edges with the Bevel and Emboss effect.

When you are done save it as a .PNG with transparency. You need to keep the document size the same (400 pixels (h) x 2000 pixels (w)) when you save it out. We recommend using the Save for Web feature in Photoshop and selecting PNG / 24 bit / transparent.

We recommend you keep the name of the file the same, although you can rename it to anything you like so long as the name is web ready meaning that it has no spaces or special characters in it.

Uploading Your Custom Watermark
When you you saved your custom watermark out as a .PNG with transparency and are ready to upload it, go to the Site Manager > Site Settings > Watermarking Options page and click the Browse button:

Select the watermark file you have customized and then click the Apply button:

Using the Default Watermark
If you don't want to create your own custom watermark then you can use the Pixplug Default Watermark. On the Site Manager > Site Settings > Watermarking Options page click the Use Default Watermark button. This will apply the default watermark to all images in albums that are setup to be watermarked.

The default watermark looks like this when applied to a photo:

Using the Watermark Template with the effects and default settings in the template you will get the same results as shown above in the default example. Many Pro Photographers choose to simply replace the text with their company name and / or a copyright statement and use that to watermark their images.

Applying the Watermark to Albums
To apply the watermark to photos you have to put the photos in an album and then apply the watermark to the album using the Album Manager > Album Controls > Album Settings page. On this page you can define the Album Preferences:

The watermarking option is not on by default. You have to manually apply this to the albums you want to have protected with your watermark options. When you check the option it can take up to 20 minutes to apply the watermark to your album, depending on how many users are on the Pixplug system and how many photos are in your album. Typically it takes around 5 minutes or less but we like to give you a conservative time to expect before the watermark will show up.

You must click the Apply button for the Album after you check the Watermark checkbox or else your settings are not applied to the album:

How Watermarks Are Used
When we watermark your images we do not apply the watermark to the original image so our watermarking system is non-destructive in that you can always remove it or change it anytime you want and your original photos are not affected by the change.

When you watermark the photos in an album, the watermark is applied to all of the various sizes for the image and is also applied to any image being downloaded. If you allow a viewer to download your photos and have watermarked them, they will receive a high-resolution version of the file that is watermarked.

The watermark is always applied to the center of the photo and is scaled to fit proportionately.

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