ALP Tutorial: Watermarking in PicMonkey & WordSwag
Well, hello there! Welcome back to your watermarking tutorial with Autumn Lane. Last week, we covered Photoshop and Lightroom. This week, let’s talk about a few other ways we can get that logo of yours onto some of your branding, images, and products — however you want to watermark your thing-a-ma-jigs.
Since Photoshop and Lightroom aren’t available to all of our clients — and let’s be real, the learning curve is pretty steep — we’re going to focus on a beginner graphic design program, and an app that you can use for watermarking on the go. We’d highly recommend learning & investing in Photoshop or Lightroom for best results, but we realize that it’s not feasible for everyone.
Ready to get started? PicMonkey Watermarking
The best place to start is www.picmonkey.com — then click on “Design like a pro” because why not?!
So, this is where I went ahead and picked an image similar to the last tutorial, consistency is key after all! It takes a minute, so you’ll see these gears hang on while it does it’s monkey thing…
Oh, just wait… you’ll see what monkey thing I’m talking about!
LOOK! MONKEYS! I think… King Kong was a gorilla, so maybe not. Cute little branding pull there on PicMonkey’s side. Well done, and memorable.
I went with the choice they suggest, because they know what they’re doing — it would probably be easiest for someone with little to no graphic design experience to go with the recommendation. Right? Right. So, read what your options are – Jack, Bubbles or King Kong.
Side note: Take a look at that little yellow button/flag/banner — I’m doing this under “free trial,” so just know they offer a free trial. I’m pretty sure without doing any research on this matter that I can gamble PicMonkey has paid accounts to use their services, so before you decide this is your place of watermarking, just make sure you know what you’re getting set up for. Or hopefully at this point, you’ve been using them and know your way around a little bit!
Alright, I’ve got my layers up in the corner.
We’re going to click on the BUTTERFLY — on the left side, five down under the Tt — this is where we’ll get what we need to create a decent watermark.
Click, and then click on My Computer — see where I’m going with this?! Navigate to your logo.
Grab your logo and go ahead and open/choose that image…
BOOM!
Now you’ve got your logo on your image. You can leave it like this and use it on websites or social media. Or let’s scroll on to watermark time!
On the right side, by the color bar you’ll see FADE, move that slider as you see fit to change the opacity of your logo.
Here I moved the window for the overlay so I could resize the logo and put it down in the corner. To resize, click the little corner and move it how you see fit. Voila! You now know how to watermark in PicMonkey!
After this, I clicked saved and it prompted me to start my free trial, or consider a subscription. See?
Pretty easy-peasy.
Watermarking for Mobile – WordSwag
Some of our clients have mentioned that they don’t have a desktop or laptop at home, and they do most of their business from a mobile device, like a tablet or a phone. That means you’ll need to have an app for watermarking your images available, and we’ve found WordSwag, which is available on both Apple and Android devices. Just a note — WordSwag is a premium app (it’s not free) but the cost to use this app is minimal compared to the convenience that it provides users on the go, and compared to alternate solutions (like Photoshop or Lightroom). Although WordSwag supports overlaying text that you type on your mobile device onto an image, we’re going to be talking about actually putting your logo onto your image — it’s pretty badass for an app!
I’m a fan of the user-friendly structure of WordSwag, and I’ve got an awesome trick to being able to use a logo in this app.
READ THIS PART CAREFULLY, you need to understand where you’re saving your logo from. We’ve found that you cannot save your logo to your camera roll, and use it with transparency here. Seriously, saving you a headache! 😉 In order to use your logo, you need to make sure you’ve got your transparent .PNG file saved to Dropbox (or similar cloud storage) and have Dropbox on your phone. You’ll be able to upload your logo from Dropbox and maintain transparency. I’ll explain below…
Here we go! Alright, you’ll open up WordSwag, and then choose your image that needs watermarking.
You’ll click on the text — just do a “.” for starters. WordSwag will prompt you to write more, but continue anyway — we don’t want anything but the dot.
I find that “Fresh” is a good one because it’s small enough, make it the color necessary to blend in (I went with black) then I moved it up into the laptop. You could easily just move it slightly off the screen. (Similarly, you can use the transparency slider and then adjust the transparency slide. Per WordSwag’s website, the app isn’t necessarily designed to add only a logo image, which is why you need this little work-around.) AND SAVE.
Yup, there it is. See it… “Add Logo” — click that, this is where it’s going to suggest it’s a transparent backdrop. This is where you’ll navigate & select your logo from Dropbox.
Select your logo, and it’ll appear on your image! You’ll be able to change the size, transparency, and placement. Don’t forget to save! Voila! Now, you know how to use this app to watermark your image on the go!
I also like that once you’ve used the logo, the next time you go to add it, it’ll already have it waiting to be used. WordSwag is perfect for making cute things to share on Facebook or Instagram, or your blogs. We’d suggest grabbing one or more sets of stock images so that you can upload those to your Dropbox, select them, and then overlay your own inspirational or motivational messages for social media. Don’t forget to brand them with your logo, too!