Watermark your Photos for Copy Protection

Placing an overlay watermark on images that you plan to post on the Web will identify them as your own work and discourage people from copying them or claiming them as their own. You can add a semi-transparent overlay to many images automatically when you use the Web Photo Gallery Creator feature in Photoshop and Photoshop Elements. Just look under the "Security" section of the setup dialog.

The choices available include custom text, copyright notice, the filename, a caption, credits, or title. Note that some of these options will only exisit if you have added them to the IPTC data through the "File Info" command in Photoshop, or through another image manager that supports IPTC data.

You can also control the color, font, size, and position of the watermark text.
Some options you may want to use for the custom text would be "Proof", "Sample", your company name and URL, or the copyright symbol.

To embed a watermark:

1. Open the image that you want to watermark. You can embed only one digital watermark per image. The Embed Watermark filter won't work on an image that has been previously watermarked.

If you're working with a layered image, you should flatten the image before watermarking it; otherwise, the watermark will affect the active layer only.

Note: You can add a digital watermark to an indexed-color image by first converting the image to RGB mode, embedding the watermark, and then converting the image back to indexed-color mode. However, the results may be inconsistent. To make sure that the watermark was embedded, run the Read Watermark filter.

2. Choose Filter > Digimarc > Embed Watermark.
3. If you are using the filter for the first time, click the Personalize button. Get a Digimarc ID by clicking Info to launch your Web browser and visit the Digimarc Web site at www.digimarc.com, or by contacting Digimarc at the telephone number listed in the dialog box. Enter your PIN and ID number in the Digimarc ID text box, and click OK.

Once you have entered a Digimarc ID, the Personalize button becomes a Change button, allowing you to enter a new Digimarc ID.

4. Enter a copyright year, Transaction ID, or Image ID for the image.
5. Select any of the following image attributes:
• Restricted Use to limit the use of the image.
• Do Not Copy to specify that the image should not be copied.
• Adult Content to label the image contents as suitable for adults only. (Within Photoshop, this option does not limit access to adult-only images, but future versions of other applications may limit their display.)
6. For Target Output, specify whether the image is intended for monitor, Web, or print display.
7. For Watermark Durability, drag the slider or enter a value, as described in the next section.
8. Select Verify to automatically assess the watermark's durability after it is embedded. For more information.
9. Click OK.

From Sue Chastain,
source:http://graphicssoft.about.com