As photographers or any type of creative person we need to protect our property by adding a Copyright watermark or Metadata, when ever you send your images to clients or to show off your images on a website, you need to protect yourself.
To find out about your right on copyright & the law go to Wikipedia website http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Copyright
If you are working in Adobe Lightroom it have it own watermark called Metadata.
Metadata is a set of standardized information about a photo, such as the author’s name, resolution, color space, copyright, and keywords applied to it. For example, most digital cameras attach some basic information about a file, such as height, width, file format, and the time the image was taken. Lightroom also supports the information standard developed by the International Press Telecommunications Council (IPTC) to identify transmitted text and images. This standard includes entries for descriptions, keywords, categories, credits, and origins. You can use metadata to streamline your workflow and organize your files.
File information is stored using the Extensible Metadata Platform (XMP) standard. XMP is built on XML. In the case of camera raw files that have a proprietary file format, XMP isn’t written into the original files. To avoid file corruption, XMP metadata is stored in a separate file called a sidecar file. For all other file formats supported by Lightroom (JPEG, TIFF, PSD, and DNG), XMP metadata is written into the files in the location specified for that data. XMP facilitates the exchange of metadata between Adobe applications and across publishing workflows. For example, you can save metadata from one file as a template, and then import the metadata into other files.
Metadata that is stored in other formats, such as EXIF, IPTC (IIM), and TIFF, is synchronized and described with XMP so that it can be more easily viewed and managed.
Specify where to write metadata changes
Lightroom automatically writes adjustments and settings metadata to the catalog. You can also instruct Lightroom to write the changes to XMP. In order for changes made in Lightroom to be recognized by other applications, metadata must be written to XMP.
- Choose Edit > Catalog Settings (Windows) or Lightroom > Catalog Settings (Mac OS).
- Click the Metadata tab, and then do either of the following:
- To write adjustments and settings metadata to XMP, select Automatically Write Changes Into XMP.
- To write adjustments and settings metadata only to the catalog, deselect Automatically Write Changes Into XMP.
- To write adjustments and settings metadata to XMP, select Automatically Write Changes Into XMP.
If you don’t write adjustments and settings metadata to XMP automatically, you can select a file and choose Metadata > Save Metadata To File.
Save metadata changes to a file manually
To manually save metadata changes to a photo in Lightroom, do one of the following:
- Select one or more photos in the Grid view of the Library module and choose Metadata > Save Metadata To File(s), or press Ctrl+S (Windows) or Command+S (Mac OS).
- Click the Metadata File Needs To Be Updated icon
in a thumbnail in the Grid view of the Library module, and then click Save. - If you’re working with a DNG file, choose Metadata > Update DNG Previews & Metadata to save metadata changes to the file and also generate a preview based on the current raw processing settings.
Please Note: If you are just looking at just applying a watermark to your photographs you can skip1, 8 & 9.
Wedding Photograph with copyright and photographer name
Step 1: Open your image, go to the action palette and create a new action. Name this Copyright & set to watermark.
Step 2: Now create a new layer, choose custom shape tool and click on the copyright sign.
Step 3: Draw a black copyright sign on your image.
Step 4: Apply emboss filter to your copyright sign ( go to Filter > Stylize > Emboss).
Step 5: Change the Layer mode to Hard Light keep the Opacity 100%
next choose the Type Tool from your Tool Palette and start writing your person description under the embossed copyright sign. Repeat step 4 & 5 to your text. Next is to bring down the Opacity until you are happy with the way the text looks.
Step 6: To embed a copyright note go to File> file info to bring up the file info dialog. This is where you enter your information that you want to be embedded in to the file itself.
When you are done, click on the stop icon at the bottom of the Actions Palette.
Step 7: The last step, go to File> Automate>Bach ( or from Adobe Bridge, go to Tool> Photoshop>Batch). Choose your Action's name and click on 'Choose' to choose your folder full of photographs, then under 'Destination' choose 'Save and Close'. This will apply a watermark, and copyright any info to your images, the save and close the document.
