How to watermark your images using Overlay

It's no secret that I love PicMonkey and one of the newer features that I really adore is Overlay. With this feature, I am able to watermark my images in a second. Previously, I would add the watermark to every single image, one by one and because I had to use a specific font, I had to go search for the font, etc. Imagine doing that to lots and lots of images. So I wished and I wished and PicMonkey heard my wish!

So I'm going to share with you how I create a watermark which you can use over and over again. Think of all the time you'll save which you can use for something more important like drinking tea.

This is quite an unconventional way of working so I hope you'll bear with me.

Step 1

You need to go Here to download an image I created with a transparent background. It's called transparent.png. And don't freak out when you go to the above link and see an empty file. It's transparent! Save it to your computer. If you have problems going to the link, I suggest you NOT use Firefox as sometimes it misbehaves.

p.s. I'm not showing you how to create a transparent background as you need a software with the capability to do the job.  fyi - I used photoshop elements.

Step 2

Open picmonkey.com and click on "Edit a photo".

Select transparent.png which you had previously saved.

You will see a blank PicMonkey page. It's correct. It's transparent, remember?

Step 3.

On side bar, click on P. This will bring up the text screen. Click on "Add Text".

See the text box in the middle of screen that says "Click here and type"? Enter your watermark. This could be your name, your blog name, your blog url, basically anything that identifies you.

Step 4.
Once you're satisfied with how your watermark looks, click on the first icon on side bar. It looks like atom. It will bring up the Basic Edits screen. Click on Crop.

Do you see how clicking on Crop shows up the transparent background which is in grey? Now you crop the image to whatever size your watermark is.

Do take note that if you've positioned your watermark outside the transparent background (grey area), you need to cancel your Crop and move the watermark within the transparent background or it'll get lopped off.

This is what my final watermark looks like. It doesn't have to fit so perfectly because the background is transparent. The cropping is to reduce the size of the watermark file.

Step 5.

Save your watermark to your computer. Give it a new name. It is very important that you leave the file type as .png otherwise the transparency will not be preserved.

Step 6.

From picmonkey.com upload an image you want to watermark. This image would be your regular jpg images.

Here is where the Overlay magic begins.....

On the sidebar click on the heart/star/speech bubble icon. This will bring up the Overlays screen. See right below the word "Overlays"? Click on "Your Own". Select the watermark file you saved in the previous step. Your watermark will appear ON the image you're editing.

Place your watermark over image at strategic positions, in my case I like it on the bag. The watermark can be enlarged and edited further - colour, fade, blend modes. For me, I just want to be quick. I place it over the image, adjust the size of the watermark and I'm done. Save bag image as per normal in jpg format.

Here's the final result.

Here's another version.

What do you think of this way of watermarking your images? Or do you prefer to add text to every image?