iWatermark Pro

for Mac and Window

Secure and Protect Your Photo

Overview

Table of All iWatermark Software

Older Versions of iWatermark Pro for Mac & Win

Acknowledgements

How to Purchase

Tech Support

Registration Question

List of Some of the Features

Why use iWatermark Pro Over Other Programs

• iWatermark is less expensive, faster and easier for watermarking than Photoshop because it was designed exclusively for watermarking and the workflow of professional photographers.
• iWatermark is made for Mac, Windows, iOS and Android. iWatermark Pro. Sharing watermarks between these apps will be possible by the beginning of 2017
• 11 watermark types. Other apps have only 1 or 2.
• iWatermark can rename batches of files, filter input files, and resize photo files.
• iWatermark processes RAW images which most don't.
• iWatermark can add or remove IPTC/XMP info during batch processing of photos.
• IMPORTANT - with iWatermark you can use photos of different resolutions and orientations in a batch and still keep the watermark on each photo looking the same because of the Scaling tool. Scale means a watermark can take an exact percentage of the width no matter the resolution or orientation of each photo.
• iWatermark has a sophisticated watermark editor that can create text, text arc, text banner, graphic, vector, line, QR, metadata and resize watermarks.
• iWatermark can create a watermark that embeds IPTC/XMP data each time its used with or without a visible watermark. Great for news organizations.
• iWatermark is extremely fast which is important as file sizes and processing of batches continues to grow.
• iWatermark keeps a database of all watermarks that can be used with a click.
• There are applications like Photoshop that can watermark an image but iWatermark has a watermark manager which can track hundreds of watermarks. The manager also allows locking/unlocking, embedding IPTC/XMP, searching, renaming, deleting, previewing, merging, exporting, batch processing and sharing of watermarks.

Installation

Quick Start Tutorial                                     

Watermark A Photo

Make your own Watermarks

Watermark Types

Visible Watermarks

Text Watermark

Text watermarks are easy to create. Text is sharp at any size and depends on the available fonts.

The above screenshot shows all the settings you see when creating a text watermark.

1) Type - Set the dropdown menu to one of the watermark types.

2) Name - Set the name you want for the watermark

3) Content -Set the content for the text watermark.

4) Insert - Insert into the content special characters like the © symbol for copyright or ™ for trademark, etc. Also you can insert Tags which are variables for IPTC or EXIF info in the photo. More info is here.

5) Font - Set the Font and to it’s right the Font Size.

6) Effect - Sets the effect like engrave, emboss, inverse, etc. To the right of Effects, set Color of the font, text dropshadow, and the direction of the light creating that shadow.

7) Background Color - Set the Background color and Border details

8) Alignment - Set Alignment (left, center, right) of text and padding which puts more padding/space around the text.

9) Rotation - Change the rotation of the text.

10) Opacity - Set the Opacity/Transparency.

11) Scaling - This sets iWatermark apart because it give the options of relative and absolute scaling.

Relative (%) – the default setting, simplest to understand and use. Does exactly what most people want. In relative mode position is set by % from edges. No matter size of photo you will get the visually same results. Watermark size/position are affected by photo dimensions. On the photo page this setting allows you to set the relative position of the watermark (by %) irrespective of the size and orientation of each photo in a batch. Example: in a batch of 2 photos, one low and the other high resolution, a border watermark set to be approx 10 pixels wide on one low resolution photo might when measured be 20 pixels wide on the high resolution photo. In the past we only had a “Relative” mode, but some users requested an “Absolute” one.

Absolute (pixels) – set everything, position, fonts, borders, graphics and everything is in changed to work in pixels. “Absolute” metrics mode makes sizes/positions of everything independent of photo size. Watermark size and position will remain the same (in pixels) for all photos. Example: in a batch of 2 photos, one low and the other high resolution, a border watermark set to 10 pixels wide would on both photos be exactly 10 pixels wide.

Relative is for setting the watermark location by percentages. This becomes essential when you want a watermark to appear the same size and in the same place in a batch of photos that may all be different resolutions, sizes and orientations.

In the above screenshot you can see the scaling dropdown menu is set to 'No Scaling' by default. That means you are working not in % but in pixels.

All the options for Scaling are seen in the dropdown menu above 'No Scaling', 'Horizontal Scale To:' and 'Vertical Scale To:'

No Scaling - sets scaling to work in pixels.

Horizontal Scale To: - sets the scale to work horizontally in %.

Vertical Scale To: - sets the scale to work vertically in %.

12) Tile to cover image - repeats the text multiple times across the photo. This is important for those people who want to insure no part of the photo is taken.

13) Pin - allows you to set the location of a watermark in such a way that it is the same on all photos, no matter their resolution or orientation (portrait or landscape). Pin allows setting the location in a general way to top,left or bottom,right, etc.

14) Location - Once you have set the general location with Pin you can fine tune that like this. Below you see 'Offset X' and 'Offset Y'. Depending on which Pin you chose you can change X and Y, X or Y. X is the horizontal direction and Y is the vertical direction.

If you are are watermarking one photo there are easier ways to set the location but the reason it's like this is too allow watermarks to appear in the same spot whether you're watermarking one or a thousand photos of different sizes and orientations.

The Text Watermark has the most settings so we started with it. For each of the following watermark type we only add the description of settings not included in the Text Watermark.

Tags are extremely useful. Use ‘Insert Tag(s)’ in all text watermark settings (seen above) to put Metadata (like camera model, creation date, sequential numbering, file name, location, etc.) from that photo or video into a visible watermark on that photo or video. Use these to create your own customized watermark to display a variety of info on your photos that will be different depending on the metadata in that photo.

This can be used in a variety of ways. Here is an example.

Example 1: Let's say you want to put a unique number, like a serial number on each photo in a batch of 119. In the above screenshot you can see how the <counter> and <total> tags are added to a text watermark and placed on the photo. Now each photo in the batch will have a unique Counter and Total. It can be seen in action at the bottom left of the photo above in the zoomed in photo below. This shows the photos are each numbered correctly in this case, Number 021 of 119. Very handy!

Example 2: Add the Latitude and Longitude to 1 or 10,000 photos using tags. Seen below while making the watermark with preview.

Text On Arc Watermark

An Arc Text Watermark produces a watermark of text on a curved path. Below are all it’s settings, more settings then any other watermark. The best way to understand these is to experiment and test them out. It has more settings then just a ‘Text’ watermark. Those additional settings are described below.

Autosize Radius - ?description?

Radius - ?description?

Outside Text - ?description?

Angle - change the angle of the text on the arc. Or rotate the angle with the circle with dot icon.

Other settings not mentioned here will be found in the Text Watermark settings above.

Text On Banner Watermark

Bitmap/Logo/Graphic Watermark

Graphic Watermarks are good for logos, art and signatures. Use your logo or any graphic but they need to be a special graphic format called .png with transparent background. The sample signatures, symbols and other graphics we include have transparent backgrounds and are .png files. That means that even though the graphic is square only the signature itself shows and that which is not the signature is transparent allowing the background photo to show through. The file format to do this is called .png with transparency and it allows the background of the watermark to be transparent (a .jpg does not allow this transparency, .png must be used).

This is for logo’s and other graphic art.

1. In the watermark editor click ‘Add New Graphic’. You can choose any graphic file like your logo to act as a watermark. Graphics are best when they are .png files with transparency so the background does not show. See the FAQ for more details. 2. Click on any of the Tools to change the rotation, transparency, etc. Give it a name and hit save.

3. Your new watermark is added to the dropdown menu (seen above). Choose it or any other to watermark a photo. Use the - button to delete the displayed watermark.

Vector Watermark

Lines Watermark

Lines watermarks are often seen used by stock photo companies. The nature of the lines

QR Watermark

A QR Code (it stands for “Quick Response”) is a cell phone readable bar code that can store website URL’s, plain text, phone numbers, email addresses and pretty much any other alphanumeric data up to 4296 characters. A QR can make a great watermark.

The QR example image below holds our website url, https://plumamazing.com. Both the camera apps on iOS (in iOS 11) and the pure Android Camera app can scan and act on the info in a QR codes. Chrome also can read QR codes on both Android and iOS. There are also many other QR scanner apps available in the app stores. Scan the QR code below and you get the choice to go to our site automatically. You can make one for your site or to any page with any info you want to display.

Usage examples. QR’s can be handy as a watermark on photos and other graphics that can hold name, email, url to take people to your site or other info depending on your creativity.

1. Someone might have QR watermarks for a bunch of photos and each QR could lead to it’s own web page with information on location, conditions, pricing, etc.

2. Watermark your photos with a QR that contains your url, email, copyright and other info. Good for maintaining your connection with a photo for Facebook, Twitter and other social media. When you upload a photo to a social media sites they often remove metadata. Social sites do not remove visible watermarks like text, signature, graphics or QRs.

3. Make an instructional video to Vimeo, YouTube, etc. or your site. Put the direct link to your video into a QR. Get some of the paper for printing out stickers and print out a bunch of these QR codes. Now slap this QR code onto a manual. When the user needs more visual help they can scan the QR to go directly to the video.

Banner Watermark

Is a text watermark with a rectangular banner that extends across the entire photo.

Border Watermark

Another useful type is the Border Watermark. It also uses SVG (perfect rendition at all sizes) art to draw borders around a whole photo and also scrollwork at the corners.

Invisible Watermarks

Metadata Watermark

Metadata watermark are very simple to create. Metadata in this case is information about the photo.

Stegomark Watermark

A Stegomark is a steganographic watermark. This is a watermark that hides information in the color info of the photo itself. Stegomark was created and is unique to iWatermark.

Someone could crop out your visible watermarks from your photo but a Stegomark is much more likely to remain embedded in a photo because it is invisible and more resilient to jpg compression, cropping and other changes than a visible watermark.

IMPORTANT: Only 1 StegoMark per photo is possible.

StegoMark is the first ever implementation of a steganographic watermark for photography and is only available in iWatermark. Steganography refers to any process of embedding some data invisibly into the actual photo image data.

StegoMark because it combines Steganography, often called Stego for short and Mark from the word Watermark. StegoMarks use a special algorithm designed at Plum Amazing. This specialized encoding makes that data almost impossible to decipher without iWatermark. If there is no password then any copy of iWatermark can reveal the hidden text. If there is a password then only a person with the password and iWatermark can reveal the hidden text.

One way to use StegoMark is to embed your email or business url into a photo. This along with a Metadata and a visible watermark gives different layers of protection to your credentials in and attached to a photo. Each separate watermark layer will resist in different ways things that can be done to a photo like cropping, resaving, renaming, etc. to maintain your ownership information.

Create A StegoMark

To begin open the ‘Watermark Manager’ page and select the blue ‘+' icon and you will see this dropdown menu:

Select the last item StegoMark...

For ‘Name’ put a good descriptive name for this StegoMark

In ‘Text’ put the text you want to embed in the image data.

Using no password anyone with iWatermark Pro can read the message but no one else. For even more privacy, enter a password, then only someone with the password and iWatermark Pro can read that text message buried in the photos image data.

Once this is done, export the StegoMark’ed photo. Check out the next section ‘Reading A StegoMark’ to see how to see your hidden info.

2 Ways to Reveal a StegoMark

The first and easiest way to read a StegoMark is go to the file menu, select the item called 'StegoMark Viewer'. Drag you photo in, or use the select button. If there is no password it will immediately reveal the content. If there is a password then type in the password and hit 'Apply'. Here the revealed text says 'Photo by Mark Fleming'.

The 2nd way to read a StegoMark, open the exported StegoMark watermarked photo by dropping it into the input tray of iWatermark Pro or using the open from the file menu.

Then on the left edge of the input tray tap the the i with a circle around it icon. That will open the info window. Click on the StegoMark icon in this info window as seen in the screenshot below. Enter the password if you have one.

IMPORTANT: Only 1 StegoMark per photo. 25 characters or less (recommended) in a StegoMark allows it be most resilient when resaving/recompressing a watermarked .JPG photo. Up to 80 can be used but it will impact the resilience of the message. Remember you can use a URL shortener to make a URL smaller for embedding.

Main Settings Panel

• Main
• Watermark Manager
• Watermark Editor
• Filtering
• Resizing
• Renaming
• Thumbnails
• EXIF/IPTC/XMP
• Advanced
• Register

1. Main

a. Watermark Manager

• kept and previewed.
• selected to watermark an image.
• double clicked to edit.
• renamed using the field at the bottom right.
• searched for using the search field at top right.
• deleted.
• locked/unlocked which they are protected when locked you can’t edit or delete them.
• embed IPTC/XMP
• exported and shared via email or social media.

Watermark Manager Window (it is on the right below)

b. Watermark Editor

ix. Effects 

Using the Effect Engraved Background on Text from the Text Watermark Settings

Using the Effect Embossed Background on Text from the Text Watermark Settings

2. Filtering

Filtering

3. Resizing

Resizing

Resizing

Turn on resizing on this or the main page to resize or watermark and resize. Resizing takes the original and produces a copy that is a particular size. It reads resize within width and within height and that means it will resize the photo within those dimensions. You can also use the handy presets which are commonly used sizes to resize to.

Resampling

Is used to change the sampled resolution. What does this mean? Here is a good explanation.

4. Renaming and Output Settings

Renaming

5. Thumbnails

Thumbnails

6. EXIF/IPTC/XMP

EXIF/IPTC/XMP

7. Advanced

Advanced

Dropbox is used to backup and share watermarks.

Register

Using Apple’s Photo’s app with iWatermark Pro Mac

Applying Watermark from Windows Explorer

Menus

iWatermark Pro Menu

Check for Updates

File Menu

Export icon

View Menu

Layout Menu

Window Menu

Help Menu

Frequently Asked Questions

1. Let us know if you followed the procedure above.
2. Send us the photo you are using. Also export and send the watermark you are using.
3. Send us the console log after causing the problem in iWatermark. To do this open the console log hit the button on the advanced tab that says 'open console log'. Clear the console log then run iWatermark again to cause the problem then copy the resulting info in the console log and email it to us.

1. Check the Mac or Windows app page on out site to make sure you have the latest version and make sure it is in your Application folder.
2. Delete all old versions.
3. Registering the app using the license key. Make sure to follow the directions in the email you were sent after purchasing the app.
4. If you get a dialog that says you are ‘Not registered’ then make sure to copy and paste your registration data from the registration email we sent.
5. After a click on the Apply Registration button you should see this (below). Otherwise contact us if you have any question.

1.  Do not show progress dialog. 2. Close the Preview window if open. 3. Turn off Preview in Watermark manager by dragging the divider to top.

Photo Plugin is installed in:

~/Library/Application Support/iPhoto/Plugins/

QuickLook plugin is installed in:

/Library/QuickLook (ie. for all users -- this requires Admin account).

Aperture plugins are installed in:

~/Library/Application Support/Aperture/Plug-Ins/Export/

~/Library/Application Support/Aperture/Plug-Ins/Editor/

To download the installer of the plugins from the iWatermark Pro’s menu choose, ‘Download Installer to Install iPhoto & Aperture Plugins and Fonts’. Or you can download the installer here: https://plumamazing.com/bin/iwatermarkpro/iWatermarkPluginInstaller.pkg.zip

The following folders should exist already but they must exist for the installer to place the iPhoto and Aperture plugins:

~/Library/Application Support/Aperture/Plug-Ins/Editor

~/Library/Application Support/Aperture/Plug-Ins/Export

~/Library/Application Support/iPhoto/Plugins

If the installer has a problem check to see if they are there. Hold option key down and select the Go menu to access the library folder. Then check the Application Support folder and if they are not there you can create them manually. Or if you are familiar with the Terminal then copy and paste the following into the Terminal:

mkdir -p ~/Library/Application Support/Aperture/Plug-Ins/Editor

mkdir -p ~/Library/Application Support/Aperture/Plug-Ins/Export

mkdir -p ~/Library/Application Support/iPhoto/Plugins

For the record these are the plugins that go in those folders: iWatermarkAperture Export.ApertureExport goes in Export folder

iWatermarkAperture Stomper.ApertureEdit goes into Editor folder

iWaterMarkFileExporter.iPhotoExporter goes into iPhoto/Plugins folder

Q: How do I uninstall the plugins. A: To uninstall the iWatermark plugins in iPhoto and Aperture

iPhoto

========

1. Quit the iPhoto application if it is running. 2. In the Finder select the Go Menu -> Go To Folder type in: ~/Library/Application Support/iPhoto/Plugins A new Finder window will open showing you the plugin folder. 3. Delete "iWaterMarkFileExporter.iPhotoExporter" in the iPhoto plugin folder. 4. Launch iPhoto. To test select photo to export. Then select: File->export iWatermark plugin should be gone so you can no longer select the plugin.

Aperture

========

1. Quit the Aperture application if it is running. 2. In the Finder select the Go Menu -> Go To Folder type in: ~/Library/Application Support/Aperture/Plug-Ins/Editor 3. Delete "iWatermark Stomper.ApertureEdit" 4. In the Finder select the Go Menu -> Go To Folder type in: ~/Library/Application Support/Aperture/Plug-Ins/Export 5. delete "iWatermarkApertures.ApertureExport"

Sharing Watermarks

Terminology

Miscellaneous Links and Info

[sta_anchor id="applescript" /]Applescript Info

Special Info for Windows Version

iWatermark Support