How To Watermark Using Adobe Lightroom

I wrote a post a while back about how to watermark your digital images using Picasa, but now that I'm using Lightroom almost exclusively I thought I would write one about how to watermark in there.

First, edit your photo to how you want the final image to look.  If you are like me, you resize your images and watermark them for internet use, and then export a full size one to your hard drive for personal/selling purposes.  When you are ready to export the image you want watermarked, go to the Library module:

Next click on the Export button in the bottom left of the screen.  You will get this window:

You will need to scroll down a bit to see this menu item "Watermarking".  Check off the box next to Watermark:  and the drop down menu will become available to you.  Choose "Edit Watermarks" and this window will come up:

Enter what you want your watermark to say in the text field indicated above.  OR you can upload a previously made graphic watermark by choosing a file under "Image Options" located at the top right.

Choose the alignment of your text watermark under Text Options.  This does not move the watermark around on the screen.  It is just like when you type a paragraph in Word and choose the alignment of the text.  My text is aligned Left, meaning that each line of text will start under the left-most character of the first line.

To move it around on your photo scroll down to this part:

Here is where you choose the Opacity, or translucence, of your text.  If you want it very bold and obvious you would slide it all the way to the right.  If you want it fainter and more "see-through" then you slide to the left.

You can also choose the size of the watermark itself, and you can rotate it if you want it sideways or upside down using those buttons on the bottom right.

Anchor is how you choose what part of the screen you want it to be added to.  I chose the bottom right and clicked the corresponding button.  You can see in the thumbnail image above exactly where and how it is going to look, which is a really nice feature of both LR 3 and LR 4.

*You can also hover over the preview image and move it around that way, but I preferred to use the anchor buttons when playing around with it.

Click on Save and it will give you the option to name your watermark and use it for the future without going through all this again!

Finished product will look like this when you export: