Gimpdome

New Dome member, tooblai, sent me a note on DA asking if it was possible to add watermarks to an image with GIMP.  The answer to that questions is a resounding "Yes". Even more importantly, it's easy.  There are many ways to accomplish this task.  The method I use gives an 'embossed' or raised feel to the watermark.  Here's my steps (If any images look distorted, firefox users can right-click on the image and choose View Image from the menu for a full-size version):

Step 1

Open you image in GIMP and add some text.  Color of the text does not matter as our text layer is simply a place holder.



NOTE:If you want to center your text layer, select the text layer in the layer dialog window. Disregard the fact that my text layer says 'Art' rather than 'fencepost'.  I added this step after all my screenshots were made! 



Then do a Ctrl+X to remove the layer and place it on the clipboard.  Then, immediately, do a Ctrl+V to paste the clipboard contents back into the GIMP window.  Your layer is now centered!

Before you can use the layer, you need to 'anchor' it to a new layer.  To do so, just click the new layer button at the bottom of the layer dialog window.....

Step 2

Go to Script-FU Menu > Shadow > Xach Effect...



and experiment with the settings that appear.  Here's the ones I've used....



Here's my results:



Step 3

Go back to your layer dialog window and deselect the 'eye' next to the original text layer like so:



You can now adjust the opacity settings of the two layers above the original text layer if you need to.  The shadow layer was set to 66 by the Xach Effect Script.  I set the Highlight layer to 66% as well.

Here's my final results.



As I said, this is just one of the many ways to add a watermark to your work.  This is the one I use.  Thanks for taking the time to read this tutorial and hope you learned some new tools to add to your arsenal.

Keep on GIMPing!

Art