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Watermark pictures

mil

Hello everyone, it's Mil.
I just came back from B, Z and Cape Town., Amazing!
Any questions or needed info. please, mess.- me direct. I will not be giving any public info. or reports for now...
But, I would appreciate if anyone can kindly give me the name of an App or how to watermark my pictures, they came out way to good-NG good and I know there are some crows out there copying photos.... .
Thanks you all .
My regards.

Comments

British

It’s funny, the elephant photo looks like my logo, but that was taken in Namibia and they are desert elephants. It’s true, many animal photos look exactly the same..I guess Facebook is worse, I am not on Facebook but friends send me stuff on WhatsApp. During the early part of the Pandemic, I would get inspirational messages or complete opposite, videos of very funny comedians every day from England to cheer me up.

DebiHoran90

RWILSO 15. Your photos are incredible! One of the best trips. Looking forward to "mil" post.

British

Yes Mil, pease post, it can just be words and like Ourtravels sort of says, only you know the context of your photos. My snapshots are just that, a moment in time to remember in the future in my photobook, to jog my memory a bit. The grandchildren have looked at the safari ones, but to be honest, if I had not written something by them to say where it was, it could have been in any one of the seven to eight sub Saharan countries I have been to. if it’s a lion, Buffalo, leopard or elephants etc. More country specific is easy like a meerkat, oryx or gorilla, those are great clues. In fact, I think most might agree just the best place to have a decent camera is on safari above any other type of vacation.

MikeHenderson

Years ago there were people who did "scrapbooking" and they used to say, "If you don't put your pictures in a scrapbook with text, your children won't have any idea who those people are or where they were."

The same thing is true today, but we can do it electronically and share with others anywhere in the world by doing a blog. For me, a blog is the story of our trip, with pictures of the interesting things and text to describe what's going on.

I would encourage other travelers to do a blog of their travel. There are a number of sites that will host your blog and they have features that make it easy to do.

I have a number of people who I share my blog with. Whenever I make a major update, I sent them an email with a link to the new material. They are family, friends and people all over the world who we've met on our travels and who asked to be kept informed of our blog updates.

It's better than a scrapbook because they can simply delete the message if they're not interested. If they were in a friend's home and the friend pulled out the scrapbook, they're stuck and have to feign interest and excitement

MCD

I have just about finished my most recent album(s) -- from my Royal Danube, Berlin & Krakow trip, to which I added 5 extra days in Poland. I think I'm going to have to buy another bookcase for more albums! I write on the back of each photo the place and date it was taken, and then put the identifying information (without the date) and additional text in the album so people looking at the album don't need me to explain things. This most recent trip was very much a WW II history trip for me, and I have a lot of historical information in the album accompanying the photos. I've told my daughter that when I'm in the nursing home with dementia (which, unfortunately happened to both of my parents), her job is going to be to bring a couple of albums on Sunday afternoons so we can enjoy some time together. I know that I'm doing this the old-fashioned way, but it gives me pleasure.

cvc

I do both a blog and a photo book. I research where we are going but do more research when we get home and a lot of that ends up in my blog. I share it with family and some friends, but it's for me too - I enjoy looking back on our trips. I feel very lucky to have traveled to so many places.

British

I don’t usually do photos books for places in Europe, it’s just Europe to me. Not got round to my Desert Oasis trip but I was blown away by Death Valley so will get around to it in the dark days of Winter. Most recent trip, didn’t do a blog at all, which is why I don’t remember all the temple names. Jet lag and humidity and too much food to have energy for decent blog. Restaurants, who can manage to search out restaurants on a Tauck tour, half the time I want to skip the meals…but clearly I don’t, will have to wait a couple of weeks before I dare weight myself. Will have to refer to the itineraries when I get around to that photo book.Too much to do while the weather here is so pleasant.
I’m now focused on logistics for our next trip which is not a Tauck one.

MikeHenderson

When we first started traveling, I would try to do the blog after we got home. But I found that I couldn't remember what we had done each day. Now, I take a laptop with me and try to do the pictures and text for each day at night.

Like CVC, I do a lot of research before we leave and incorporate that into the blog. For example, when we went to Antarctica I did a lot of research on the Shackelton Expedition and incorporated that into the blog - https://www.mikeandjudytravel.com/2021-2Antarctica-06.htm

Smiling Sam

MikeHenderson
7:39AM
Now, I take a laptop with me and try to do the pictures and text for each day at night.

I'm sure you do this because you find it fun to do and it gives you pleasure, but IMO it sounds like you're nearing the realm of 'Reporter' or 'Historian' vs vacationer when you are assigning yourself daily tasks so that your blog will be better.

Continue to have fun your way. That's what it's all about.

travel maven

RWILSO15: WOW!! Excellent photos, great composition. I love the black and white treatments, however, I must confess that I have always enjoyed black and white photography the most. Thanks so much for posting.

MikeHenderson

I'm a dyed in the wool technical person so doing website things come naturally to me. But the primary reason I do it is to preserve the memories for Judy and me. When I started, it was just for us two. Then friends and family started asking to be notified when we took another trip, so I created a mail list and started sending them a notice when I updated it.

Later, people we'd meet on our trips began to ask to be notified about our updates. They were on the same trip as we were and I think they wanted the chronology of the trip for when they worked their own pictures. Some enjoyed seeing the blog of places they had not been, to help them decide if they wanted to do that trip. [I've had a number of people joke to me that I saved them a lot of money because they didn't have to take the trip - they took the trip through my blog.]

I use whatever free time I have on a trip to work on the blog, but I'm an active person and don't enjoy just sitting around doing nothing. There is quite a bit of work - I have to curate the pictures and decide which ones, and in which order, do the best job of telling the story. Then each picture has to be PhotoShopped to crop and adjust the exposure and color, and reduced to a standard resolution (I use 1,500 pixels across or 1,000 pixels high, whichever is higher). [Incidentially, there's another photo editor - Luminar NEO - that has some amazing editing functions. It's not very expensive.]

Then, I use a webpage editor to create each page. Once I finish, Judy does the proofreading and editing. I use FileZilla to FTP the pictures and web pages to the server. Finally, if enough updates have been made, I send out an email message to the mail list.

I want to stress that my goal is to tell the story of each trip, not just show pictures taken on the trip.

mil

did not transfer well.. elephant legs are a little more blury than orig.- but my focus was the falling petals ( also a little blury) from the elephant's trunk.

mil

good way to watermark....:))) blury!

mil

here is one from my computer.... -another way to prevent piracy .

Smiling Sam

Mike - Do you do all of the file manipulation (Photoshop) activities that you described in your most recent post each night during a tour? That seems like a huge amount of work. I got tired just reading all that you do.

The reason I ask is because in your prior post (not the most recent one) you said,

Now, I take a laptop with me and try to do the pictures and text for each day at night.

Now if those are activities that you do when you return home, prior to the 'final release' of your blog, then you can take as much time as you like to complete the work.

BSP51

Why are so many worried about piracy? I can understand if you are a professional photographer or in some way earn money from your unique photos. But if it’s just for your ego to lay claim that your pictures of the lion are so much better than the 500 pictures that others took of the same lion, I don’t understand why it is such a big deal.

British

Great discussion people.

JohnS

Agree with BSP51. Most of us are just a bunch of travelers sharing information and photos. If the photos were our livelihood I could see perhaps giving them a copyright.

When photos are uploaded to the forum the file size is reduced and the file name is obfuscated so they are not much use to anyone who wants to steal them.

OurTravels34

I use Mixbook to make my photo books and Movavi Slidemaker to create a slideshow with music that I pick. I try snd find music from the countries I visit. I also use Photoshop Elements.to improve a picture. The problem I have is combining photos from all the different devices that family members use to put in some sort of chronological order to start my project. I haven’t figured out that task yet because I seem to make everything more complicated that it ought to be. Let me know how you all tackle this. Every time I start a project I say this I say to myself “how am I going to get through this”. Slow and easy wins the race and eventually I do (with some cussing of course).

MikeHenderson

@Smiling Sam Everything is done while I'm on the tour (or cruise). Other than doing the pictures and text of our last day (mostly about our return travel), I do very little editing or changes after we get home.

Photoshopping pictures is not that hard or time consuming once you're accustom to it. I don't do complex things, just cropping and some adjusting of exposure and color. Doesn't take a lot of time.

The laptop I take with me is a 13 inch, with an i7 processor and a 2TB SSD. It's powerful enough to do the Photoshop stuff fairly quickly.

Smiling Sam

Mike - I'm impressed. That would be too much for me.

MikeHenderson

I spent my working years doing stuff on computers so it comes easy to me and I'm fairly quick with it. Also, I'm not that interested in going to the bar in the evening (I'm basically a non-drinker), and I don't gamble, so I have to do something. This keeps me out of trouble.

[Added note: Also, I found that I have to do the description of the day fairly quickly. Otherwise, I get so I can't remember what we did, when. Maybe it's my old age.]

[Things described from research, such as the Shackleton Expedition or the Falklands War, I do before we leave. I actually create a web page for that material, exactly the way I want to present it. Then I just copy that into the appropriate place on the blog.]

BKMD

Mike - Curious if you are using the full version of Photoshop or Elements? Also, are you just doing basic stuff, such as cropping, levels/curves adjustments, captions, or some more involved things?

I did a fair amount of Photoshopping of my pics a numbers of years ago. Even took an adult-education class on Photoshop. I was the only one in the class who wasn't a graphics designer But I haven't done anything with it for a number of years (besides cropping, etc.), so don't recall much else.

OurTravels34

Photoshop Elements is so much easier. I also took a class with photoshop and within 5 minutes, I was lost; at least I tried. Photoshop is not an intuitive program in my naive opinion.

MikeHenderson

I use Photoshop Elements - the current version. I occasionally use Luminar NEO for some special edits. It has a problem that keeps me from using it all the time. One feature it has is the ability to modify the lighting in depth. That is, I can darken (or lighten) the background separately from the foreground. It's just amazing what you can do with it. I can also blur the background (bokeh) but that's pretty standard nowdays.

I do most of my work with Photoshop elements because I'm pretty experienced with it and can do things quickly. If Luminar ever fixes the problem I have with it, I'll probalby switch.

I mostly just crop and do some adjustments of exposure, color and size. I will also straighten buildings. When you're close to a building and shoot it in wide angle, it looks like the building is leaning away from you. With photoshop you can straighten up the building. Nobody ever notices that - they think that's the way you shot it.

My standard size for putting on the web is 1,500 pixels across or 1,000 pixels high. When putting pictures on the web, you want to reduce their size in order to speed up the display of the webpage.
Meaning: You could put a full size picture in your webpage and have the webpage reduce it to fit on the screen. But that's wasteful. You've downloaded a big picture - which takes longer - and then reduced it anyway. Best to reduce it first so it loads faster. When you have a lot of pictures on a webpage the time to download all of them adds up.

I don't do any captions on the pictures. I put the pictures on a webpage and then put text above and below the picture describing what's going on. You can see an example in the link I gave above. Here it is again - https://www.mikeandjudytravel.com/2021-2Antarctica-06.htm

[Added note: One additional thing I do is put in a lot of links to additional information about the area in discussion. That way, anyone who wants to know more can click on a link to learn more. Those less interested can just skip the links and read the primary text.]

OurTravels34

We do all this for fun, right?

BKMD

Cathy - PM sent. 73.

travel maven

I also shoot all my images in Raw and always did my post processing in Lightroom for years. Adobe no longer sells updated software that you own outright, you have to buy a a monthly or yearly subscription. I never liked the idea of this, but finally "bit the bullet" this month in order to get the most updated software. I purchased a yearly membership which includes Lightroom Classic, Lightroom CC (a reduced version of Classic and Cloud Based) plus Photoshop. The new software is so amazing. My lightroom software is 6 years old. I have never used Photoshop before but find it helpful for actions that cannot be done in Lightroom. I have watched alot of free YouTube tutorials on line, however, I do better in a more structured manner. I signed up for an on line Photography Class Website designed by Scott Kelby. They had a special for $5.00 for the first month rather than $19.95/month so I thought I would try it out and I can cancel at any time. So far, I am loving it, after 2 days. I have learned so much about Photoshop just in the first 10 lessons and you can always cancel your subscription. I now have access to 900 classes on line on all sorts of photography subjects including beginner classes in all the Adobe products. I am retired so I have lots of time on my hands. Classes for Photography or anything art related are limited or non existent where I live, so this is a great option. All of these memberships and on line classes get a bit expensive, but I guess all hobbies do. In the long run, it is good exercise for my brain and fun to learn new Photographic Techniques. I, like others, enjoy putting together scrapbooks of trips. Photography and Travel, they go hand in hand.

British

I’ve noticed on several tours that some people don’t take any photos.
I use Shutterfly. Everything else here is just beyond my brain. It’s a good job we all have different talents.

OurTravels34

British, you have a good brain. You were a compassionate nurse with the purpose of helping people.