#watermark

[thatdogmagic]

...that your audience won't hate.

This is a method I started using when NFTs were on the rise - thieves would have to put actual work into getting rid of the mark - and one that I am now grateful for with the arrival of AI. Why? Because anyone who tries to train an AI on my work will end up with random, disruptive color blobs.

I can't say for sure it'll stop theft entirely, but it WILL make your images annoying for databases to incorporate, and add an extra layer of inconvenience for thieves. So as far as I'm concerned, that's a win/win.

I'll be showing the steps in CSP, but it should all be pretty easy to replicate in Photoshop.

Now: let's use the above image as our new signature file. I set mine to be 2500 x 1000 pixels when I'm just starting out.

Note that your text should not have a lot of anti-aliasing, so using a paint brush to start isn't going to work well with this method. Just use the standard G-Pen if you're doing this by hand, or, just use the text tool and whichever font you prefer.

Once that's done, take your magic wand tool, and select all the black. Here are the magic wand settings I'm using to make the selections:

All selected?

Good.

Now, find a brush with a scattering/tone scraping effect. I use one like this.

You can theoretically use any colors you want for this next part, but I'd recommend pastels as they tend to blend better.

Either way, let's add some color to the text.

Once that's finished,

You're going to want to go to Layer Property, and Border Effect

You'll be given an option of choosing color and thickness. Choose black, and go for at least a 5 in thickness. Adjust per your own preferences.

Now create a layer beneath your sig layer, and merge the sig down onto the blank layer.

This effectively 'locks in' the border effect, which is exactly what we want.

Hooray, you've finished your watermark!

Now let's place that bad boy into your finished piece.

You'll get the best mileage out of a mark if you can place it over a spot that isn't black of white, since you'll get better blending options that way. My preference is for Overlay.

From here, I'll adjust the opacity to around 20-25, depending on the image.

If you don't have a spot to use overlay, however, there's a couple other options. For white, there's Linear Burn, which imho doesn't look as good, but it still works in a pinch.

And for lots of black, you have Linear Light

Either way, you're in business!

EDIT since this has escaped my usual circles, and folks aren't as familiar with my personal usage:

An example of one of my own finished pieces, with watermark, so you can see what I mean about 'relatively unobtrusive'-- I try to at least use them as framing devices, or let them work with the image somehow (or, at the very least, not actively against it).

I know it's a bummer for some people to "ruin" their work with watermarks, which is part of the reason I developed this mark in particular. Its disruption is about as minimal as I can make it while still letting it serve its intended purpose.

There's other methods, too, of course! But this is the one I use, and the one I can speak on. Hope it helps some of you!

[dvcky-duck]

here's some fake SpongeBob screenshot :] based off this image:

I did kinda trace the background a lil bit :P I actually decided to watermark my art this time bc I don't usually do it even when I prolly should- anywho! here's yet another Spongebob drawing! bc idk

silly :]

[webdiggerxxx]

꧁★꧂

[irbcallmefynn]

So yeah I guess I'll be using a watermark now. Gonna do it in the most obnoxious way possible. So going forward expect to see a lot more of the scary banana just chilling in the middle of images I post. I'll probably make it see-through so you can see things behind it but it'll be there and it'll be annoying. Fuck Midjourney.

[kapplovesu]

Some The Amazing Digital Circus fanart! :P

[prosperdemeter2]

WIP Wednesday - watermark

I had NO IDEA what to post for this pls 🙏 all I have is angst, please forgive me @wildlife4life

Eddie’s hand fumbled to the side, like Athena’s voice had knocked a thought into his head, his fingers failing to grab onto whatever he was trying to grab a hold of. He reached up, finally, like it pained him to do so and then slapped his hand clumsily against the side of Buck’s face. “Are you hurt?” 

“Trauma team has been alerted.” Dispatch reassured. 

“No,” Buck answered and then looked down at himself as if to verify if he actually was. “No, no, no.” He was. Athena could see it all down his arm, a piece of glass stuck into his wrist and blood trailing lazily down to pool in the fabric of his shirt. Mehta tried to yank it away from where he was pressing into Eddie’s wound like if he held on tight enough Eddie wouldn’t fade beneath his fingers. There were probably other injuries too, at least a dozen mental ones that Athena couldn’t make better, but Buck was good at ignoring his own pain in order to focus on what was in front of him. It was probably a survival instinct. Athena didn’t like to think about what it was born out of, about how much pain he must have been in throughout his life to be able to push a piece of glass stabbing through his arm to the back of his mind. “I’m f-okay. I’m okay. You just… you just have to stay with me, okay? Just… no, no, no, no, babe, no.” Eddie didn’t listen. Athena couldn’t blame him for it. The imperative, for him, would always be to make sure Buck was okay. His eyes rolled to the back of his head, the hand that was cupping Buck’s cheek falling to hit against his thigh and… “Eddie, please.” His voice broke into a wail on the way out.

Athena was never going to unhear it. If Eddie survived this and they got married one day, Buck would say Eddie, I do and she’d hear the way his voice sounded when he was begging him to stay alive instead. He was destroyed. It was worse than when Maddie had gone missing. It was worse than finding him and Christopher after the tsunami. It was worse. She wondered if he knew he was crying. 

Whoever was driving, slammed onto the brakes and parked haphazardly outside of the emergency room doors and Athena was the first one out, allowing a doctor to replace her body with his, the trauma team, indeed, responding like a well oiled machine. “He’s thirty-four,” Mehta repeated, hefting him up in a team lift and placing him messily on the gurney. “Name’s Eddie Diaz.” 

“We have a son.” Buck said it like it was imperative to how Eddie would be treated. Athena was pretty sure it was just how Buck always introduced him - his name’s Eddie Diaz, we have a son. “He - he’s allergic to iodine.” 

“Sir, you have to let go.” A nurse ordered without a hint of sympathy in her voice and Athena almost snapped at her for it before she remembered that the woman was just doing her job. Trying to save Eddie’s life. 

Athena grabbed the back of Buck’s arm and held him in place as they wheeled Eddie away, the arm that Eddie had wrapped around Buck’s leg falling lifeless to the side. 

They stayed. 

Mehta breathed out and doubled forward, hands on his knees and adrenaline rushing out of his body. Athena rested her shoulders against the engine and tried to calm her own rapidly beating heart. There was glass in her hair, she had a small cut from it on her cheek, Mehta had several in his palms. 

Buck stood. 

He didn’t move. In fact, if Athena couldn’t see the way his chest moved up and down, she would say he wasn’t breathing at all. He had Eddie’s blood on his face, smudges of it in the shape of Eddie’s fingers, the front of his shirt and pants were destroyed, and he was dripping blood at a sluggish pace onto his own shoes. Athena wished her husband was there, for Buck but mostly for herself. She didn’t know how to triage, how to take care of her own whirling thoughts and the lack of them that seemed to be filtering into Buck’s vacant expression. 

A tear disrupted the space Eddie had touched against the side of Buck’s face, curled down his chin and dripped onto his shirt, leaving an oddly clean line of skin in its wake and then he was shaking himself, visibly blinking back into his body and stumbling, hard, backwards into Athena’s foot. “Sorry.” He muttered halfheartedly, reaching out to steady her and scraping the skin of her arm with the glass that was still sticking out of his. “Shit, sorry.” He let go and Athena caught him around the wrist when his knee gave out. When his legs gave out, Mehta surging forward beside her as if to hold him up. Thankfully, a nurse had already been there, meeting them with a wheelchair for him to fall back into. 

“Okay.” The nurse commanded, flitting his eyes between the two of them that were still standing. “The group of you needs to get checked out. Does anyone else need a chair?” 

Athena wondered if they had been prepared for Buck to collapse backwards before, or if this particular nurse had a multitude of wheelchairs that he could make appear out of thin air. It was an absurd thought, but it was one she had anyway. She needed to call Bobby. Needed to let him know that one of his own had been gravely injured, that Buck was his and Eddie was Buck’s and that made them both, tangentially, hers. Buck looked up at her, his eyes wide and blue and petrified from where she still held onto his wrist, her fingers pressing into the wet skin coated in his own blood. “Athena.” He wasn’t even thirty, yet. He was twenty-nine. Barely even old enough to be an adult. He was so young and Athena was so old and if he couldn’t have Bobby at that moment, he would very well have her. 

She set her jaw in determination. “It’s going to be okay, Buck.” She promised. “I’m not going anywhere.” 

[imagine-creative]

Crime?

Stealing ✨glitter glue✨

Tying up the maintenance worker 😈

[wonwooridul]

HELLO & WELCOME ♡ to an all inclusive giffing guide, which includes: - vapousynth installation on windows / mac - how to source giffable material - resizing / deinterlacing / denoising / sharpening on VS - step by step breakdown of how to use VS - giffing after you've used VS - giffing using only photoshop - simple colouring guide - watermaking and blurring captions

( a better and updated version of the previous one )

GIFFING USING VS + PS

1. VAPOURSYNTH & ITS INSTALLATION

VS is free to download and use. it is truly an amazing tool which allows you to resize, denoise, sharpen your gifs all at once and save the output in gifs, frames , mp4 and mov.

You can install vapoursyth from here. The site has download software and installation guide for both MacOs and Windows. Please watch and read the installation guide thoroughly, it is a very well written one and if you follow along, installation will be done easily.

It is best to use a video with minimum resolution of 1080p but a good 720p would work sometimes. This is how gifs look after sharpening a normal 1080p video:

2. SOURCING GIFABLE MATERIAL

➞ You can start with downloading a 4K Video downloader. It will allow you to download clean and best available resolution videos from youtube. ➞ If you don't want to download a software, you can use screenrecording. - Windows : windows key + alt +R - MacOs: shift + cmnd + 5 ➞ .TS files - for seventeen .ts files, you can go to rosebay

3. TUMBLR SIZING

Tumblr has it own resizing rules so that your gifs aren't blurry after you've uploaded them. Keep this in mind when you're using VS resizing tool.

4. USING VAPORSYTNH

After you've installed the VS properly. You'll have a VS script shortcut on which you'll drop your video file for giffing. Once you drop your video file on the VS shortcut, a window like this will pop up:

After you've put your timestamps and gif duration, a resizer will open up in chrome ( or your default web) along with a VS Script Window (sometimes it’ll take a min to open).

GIF Size: WIDTH (left space) and HEIGHT (right space). Use the bottom left triangle to adjust you clip. Make sure 'Preprocessor' is set to 'None' and "debilinear'.

Use KNLM for denoising and FineSharp for sharpening by selecting them and ticking the small check box beside them. DONOT mess with the denoise and sharpening cursor on the resizer tab, we'll adjust setting on the VS Script.

There are CCs who use BM3D for denoising but it never worked for me. Always gave me an error. KNLM has worked without an error for years for me.

NOW, there are CCs who like to set frame per second ( qtgmc) on the resizer itself but qtgmc is designed to work with interlaced video. Don’t waste your time with fancams, it won’t do shit.

[ Interlaced content: live performances, variety shows. Typical formats: .ts/.tp/.m2ts Progressive content: fancams, vlive/instagram videos, some variety shows (basically 1080p/720p/480p/…, anything with a p. Typical formats: .mp4/.avi ]

Copy whatever code that comes on the top right.

YOUR VS SCRIPT:

First, remove the # on line 9 to increase your cache size so that your VS doesn't slow down or crash. It is already removed in mine, but you'll have to remove the # on the start of line 9.

Remove everything from line 17 till before "video = core.fmtc.bitdepth(video, bits =16)" and paste the code you copied from the resizer on line 17.

After you've pasted the code, we put in our denoise and sharpen settings by changing these things. denoise: 2, 6, 4 , 2 finesharp: 2

Now, Encoding aka Saving the output. Script > Encode Video and another window will pop up which allows you to select in which way you want to save your ouput.

I would highly suggest using the PNG sequence because it is easily editable and is saved in hd from. GIF output can often be dithered.

Ensure that header in in Y4M mode

Click on Start to start your encoding process. Don't close any of the window tabs before the encoding is completed.

Your output will be saved under "D:\VapourSynth64Portable(200722)\gifs\output".

Before you start encoding another batch of frames or a gif, please cut and paste the previous output in another folder because each new batch of output gets saved in the same folder with the same name, thus, automatically replacing the files.

after you’re done with accessing your output PNGs, close all the windows and repeat the same for a new set of PNGs for another gif.

TRIMMING GIFS

If your saving as PNG sequence, you can simply trim your gif by removing the unwanted frames!

If you're saving as a GIF output, after loading your gif and converting it into a smart object, you can cut it using the 'scissors' button on the timeline. Place the cursor thing from where you want to cut the gif from and press the scissors button. It will split the gif in two. Select the unwanted one and press delete.

REMOVING FLASES FROM GIFS

To remove flashes in gifs in a simple and easy way is to save them as a PNG sequence. With that you can clearly see which frame has a flash and simply delete that before loading in photoshop as stack.

5. LOADING THE GIFS IN PHOTOSHOP

Firstly, turn on your timeline mode. WIndow > Timeline

To LOAD GIF FILE IN PS FOR COLOURING File > Open > Select GIF > Enter ( a normal gif output will have a 0.02 FPS delay )

(if you want to sharpen or add any effects to the gif then:) - Click the small button on the left bottom of the timeline to convert into into video timeline.

Select all frames on your right and convert them into a Smart Object (select all > right click > covert to smart object)

Add whatever filters you want.

Add your colouring and save.

TO SAVE AKA EXPORT GIF

File > Export > Save to WEB

6. LOADING PNG SEQUENCE FRAMES FOR GIFFING

File > Scripts > Load into Stack > Browse Browse will open your File Manager. Select the frames you want to be loaded as a stack. Let them load and click OK.

After PS is done loading your frames, Follow these steps:

Click create frame animation. It’s show only one frame so you have to click this ≡ symbol on the top right of the timeline.

Then click Create Frames from layers and it’ll make all frames.

Then click ≡ again and click “reverse frames” because ps loads stacked frames in reverse so you have to un-reverse it.

4. Most importantly, we need to set frames per second because we didn't set anything on the resizer. Frames per second can make a huge difference in how fast or slow you want your gif to be. 0.05 FPS is just my preferred setting.

To input your desired FPS settings, select all frame from the timeline, right click on any frame > Other > Input your desired setting. ( anything above 0.08 will make the gif too slow )

5. Click on 'Create Video Timeline' to turn this into a video timeline. (bottom left of timeline)

i made an action that does all steps from 1 to 5. Download it here <3

6. Then select all your layers from the side panel and convert it into a smart object so that you can sharpen it and add other filters.

7. Add your adjustment layers for colouring and save it!! Saving process as same as before. (File > Export > Save to WEB)

GIFFING USING ONLY PHOTOSHOP

If you don't want to go through hassle of installing and using vapoursynth, you can use this photoshop only method. You can simply cut the video and load them as frames.

File > Import > Video Frames to Layers

A window like this will pop up:

Use the triangle cursors to set the start and end of your clip. Make sure Make frame Animation is check. Press OK.

IMP: After you frames have loaded, you'll see the frames have loaded at a 0.04FPS. You can change it according to your preference but the speed is different (slower) for these gifs even if they're both at 0.05fps, that is because the number of frames is different than number of frames from a VS png sequence for the same clip.

You can adjust the fps the same way mentioned above.

You can see the difference even with the same FPS settings. The frames in the second gif are VS generated whereas the first one is PS generated.

After setting you desired FPS, click on the Make Video frame animation button at the bottom left on the Timeline tab,, Select all frames/ layers on the right and convert them into a SmartObject.

Now comes the main part, Resizing the gif according to tumblr. For this, Image > Canvas Size. Input your desired dimentions and press OK.

Then, Click of CTRL + T (Free Transform) and adjust the gif along the canvas. like this:

Press Enter. You gif is set. all you need to do is, add your sharpening (filters > smart sharpen).

You can also refer to this amazing tutorial by @jeonwonwoo for photoshop giffing.

BLURRING CAPTIONS IN GIFS

For this you only need a gif in a Smart Object, Marquee Tool and Gaussian Blur.

Marquee Tool is the small dotted rectangle tool. Click on it and then make your selection around the caption by clicking and dragging your cursor.

normal selection

Add to selection (to the normal selection) ( best for multiple captions, it lets you select in multiple places at once) Example:

after selection, go to Filters > Blur > Gaussian Blue > 3.0

IMP: If you want to add Blur using marquee tool on a smart object that already has a smart sharpen filter (or any filter) on then you need to convert that smart object into a smart object again.

after you've added your colouring adjustment layers, save your gif. File > Export > Save for Web

WATERMARK

To make you custom watermark shape, you can follow this wonderful tutorial by @yunaevis

How to set the custom watermark or any watermark, you can follow this tutorial by me. ( bonus: it'll also teach you how to use actions for watermarking)

BASIC COLOURING

Start off Curves. Click and drag the curves from the middle to upwards. This will increase the brightness .

For skin, we begin with Selective colours. Messing with Reds and Yellows, give the skin more even saturation. You can accentuate blacks and increase brightness + contrast too.

BEFORE AND AFTER:

for a detailed basic colouring tutorial, you can follow this tutorial!

DONE AND DUSTED,,,, THANKYOU <333 I hope this was somewhat helpful <3 if anyone has a doubt, they can always contact me!

[lemonspades]

Page 2 of my Zine

Karma 1 , the Artificer

Page 1

[frumpydress]

[chic-a-gigot]

Okay, here's my photograph of the April 8, 2024 total solar eclipse. This is from Cuyahoga Falls, Ohio.

[mar0ra]

My favorite duo!!🎉

I'm sorry that I've been gone for so long it's just my drawings weren't cooking and now I'm just now liking these ones. And there's not really much for me to say here but to enjoy!

[webdiggerxxx]

꧁★꧂

[vicekillx]

please for the love of god stop putting high opacity watermarks on your art! i know art theft scary but what's the point of protecting your art if it means no one gets to see it anyway? especially on a site that is designed to act as a reference hub!

(no these are not guaranteed to prevent art theft, but nothing is. obnoxious watermarks however are guaranteed to scare off actual viewers and potential customers, and make life difficult for any artist you try to commission)

[fuure01]

need advice from artists!!

what's the best way to watermark your art effectively that doesn't come across as like 'i'm one of those artists on twitter with 100k+ followers so i actually need to watermark my art to this extent'

bc i think it looks good but i'm not that confident but it would also be nice it wasn't easy for people to just easily crop out my watermarks or blur them out with like 1 stroke :c

[prosperdemeter2]

“We should do this more often.” Eddie said thoughtfully.

“What?” Buck asked lightly, pressing closer into his side to avoid someone on an electric scooter speeding down the walkway. “Go out for an expensive dinner? You’re going to eat me out of house and home.”

“No,” Eddie snorted. “That’s Chris.”

“Oh, yeah,” Buck mocked. “He gets that from you.”

“He’s in the middle of a growth spurt.” Eddie defended weakly. “He’s only going to eat more when he gets older.”

“Yeah, he’s going to eat himself out of a college savings.”

Because they had that for him now. Eddie had started it when Chris had been born, but he had had to dip into it every now and then to cover medical expenses. But he was in a two income household now, and Buck’s bank account had enough money in it that putting some aside for Christopher barely even made a dent (and Eddie really didn’t want to think about that because, other than buying himself a new car, Buck lived humbly and complained about bills and savings like the rest of them). “I meant ,” Eddie shook his hand for emphasis in his pocket. “Get out more. Together. I love our kid but he is…”

“A pre-teen?” Buck guessed with a sly smile. “Careful, Eddie, people might think you’re trying to get me alone.”

“ Evan .”

“Yes, Eddie,” he rolled his eyes with a laugh and blushing cheeks. “I’ll let you woo me.”

Season four is up and running!

Check out watermark here.