Watermarking Pictures

By Loomis

These days, image theft is a big problem, and many innocent buyers are robbed on Ebay by thieves who use our pictures and then falsely claim that the items pictured are their own.

I encourage everyone to watermark their images. The redline hobby generates a lot of images, and people are relying on these photos in this hobby more and more each day. With the rise of Internet sales, there is less personal car inspection and more use of images as the only way to determine whether or not one should buy a car online. Unfortunately, this fact has been exploited by many thieves who have robbed innocent buyers from thousands of dollars. It will only get worse.

Therefore, I have searched the internet for a small, fast, easy to use, and FREE watermarking program, one that can do one file at a time or many files at once. After trying many programs, I have finally found a good one.

I will walk you through this process step by step. (Note this software is for Windows. If you run a Mac or Linux you should already know how to watermark images in Photoshop or The Gimp)

1) Go here: www.lunerouge.org/gnu/crl_e.htm
2) Download CopyRightLeft.zip (The download link is right below the pictures)
3) Install the program
4) Run the program via the link on your start menu
5) Click on "File" and then "Open Image"
6) A box will pop up. At the bottom of the popup box, select "Files of Type: All Files"
7) Direct the software to a picture that you want to watermark on your hard drive and 2x click it.
8) Click on the © symbol OR select "Image" and then "Add Copyright"
9) A box will pop up. Now pay attention. At the bottom choose "Center Horizontal CENTER"  and "Center Vertical CENTER". You want the watermark in the CENTER of the picture. This is the ONLY way to do this. If you watermark you images at the corner or such, anyone can crop you watermark off and proceed to steal you picture anyway!
10) Select "Transparent Background"
11) Select "Change Font". I suggest Arial size 16. I use font color white or red.
12) In the text box, where you will enter your watermark text, I suggest that you enter the following:
Image © Ebay ID X (Where X = your name)
13) Select "Ok"
14) Select "File" and then "Save Image". A box will pop up. Again, choose select "Files of Type: All Files" and then 2x click on the old file OR choose "jpg" and save the file under a new name.

(Note if you want to watermark several pictures at once, put all of the pictures that you want to watermark in to a directory. Do not put any other files into this directory. Then Start the program. Choose "image" and then "Batch Processing". Select "Select a directory" and select "Type of output file = JPG". Then hit "Ok". A box will pop up. Point it the directory containing all the files that you want to watermark and choose ok. NOTE: The batch process will automatically watermark all the images in the directory and save them automatically. You will NOT be able to undo it, so make copies of any images that you want to keep an unwatermarked copy of!)

This program also has a help file which explains everything I've typed should you get confused. You can also print these directions if you need to refer to them more easily.