Tutorial:How to put image stamps in your photos with Lightroom.

Did you know you can put image stamps on your photos directly from Lightroom? A photographer usually put his logo stamp on all his images to mark them as a part of his/her work. This is often done using a pre-made Photoshop action but I will tell you how to do it within Lightroom instead to save some production time.

To be able to do this in a simple way, you can use a plug-in for Lightroom called LR/Mogrify. Timothy Armes is the developer of this great plug-in and apart from for the graphical watermark function you can do much more funny things; You can create borders, Text annotations, resize photos and sharpen them, modify color space and play with colors’ processing.
All effects are applied on export and each one of them can easily be customized to your needs.

The free version of this plug-in can export 10 images at a time but a donation of any amount will give you an unrestricted version of this software.

Here you can download the plug-in and also read the installation instructions:
»Get the Plug-in!
Be sure to download the right version of the plug-in since it’s available for both LR 1 and LR 2.

! To get this to work you also need to download ImageMagick ( Currently I have version “ImageMagick-6.4.4-Q16) which is the image engine used with this plugin: http://www.imagemagick.org

This is how I use the plug-in to put image stamps on my photos:

  1. I start by making the watermark stamp in Photoshop; To be sure my stamp doesn’t get placed to close the photos corners I put 10px of margin around it. In Photoshop I make the background layer invisible and put a stroke effect with 2px on my text/logo layer. I prefer to use white color for my stamp (text) since it looks good on most of my photos. The black stroke around it makes sure it will be visible on really light photos as well.
  2. To get the feeling of a soft semi-transparent stamp, I change the Opacity of my text/logo layer to 50%.
  3. When I’m satisfied I save my logo as a PNG image which is a great format that can handle transparent photos with anti-aliasing edges (GIF is not an option for me here).
  4. When saved, the stamp is ready for Lightroom.
  5. When I have installed the LR2/Mogrify plug-in to Lightroom I simply open the Export window as usual. A few clicks are needed so I start by inserting “Mogrify Configuration” and “Graphical Watermark” from the “Post-Process Actions:”-panel (you find it on the lower left side in the export window).
  6. Since this plug-in is using open source software called ImageMagic to modify the images, the path to the software needs to be added. I add my installation path of Mogrify.exe to the Mogrify Configuration panel (See, “Path of Mogrify application:” ).
  7. In the “Mogrify Graphical Watermark” panel I then add the path to my stamp/logo.
  8. Finally I select the position for my stamp by using the checkbox option for “Position”. This selection will place my stamp in the bottom right corner.

Instruction steps 1-4
Instruction steps 1-4

Instruction steps 5-8
Instruction steps 5-8

My final image exported with a stamp directly from Lightroom:

See more of Timothys work and other plugins here.

Pierre
Pierre

If you are a Lightroom lover like myself you probably going to adore this place. It's the paradise for all people who are looking for Lightroom presets. Make sure you subscribe to my posts to be first with the latest contributions. I wish you a very pleasant stay. Regards, Pierre

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17 Comments

  1. you can do this in Lr 2 in slideshow by export to jpg, and from print module print to jpg which you can use your Ident plate as your watermark which will appear on the imaages

  2. Yes, you’re right John. It’s possible to do it in Lightroom already. I wanted to lighten up the possibility using a plug-in that also have more functionality than the built-in function. The Mogrify plug-in can do so much more when you start dig into it :-) Making a watermark is a great way to start experiment with it and this plug-in is not just for LR2.

    Thanks for your comment.

  3. Holy cow Pierre. I can’t believe you did this right after I asked. Thank you so much!! That was VERY kind of you.
    Very best,
    Tom

  4. That is AMAZING and have been looking for something like this for a very long time.
    Thank you so MUCH Pierre. Have a great weekend.
    Tom

  5. I have just started using LR/Mogrify plug-in also. I have run into one problem though, I too, like to use a white signature, so I, like you, created a PNG signature image. Only when I select the option to “Resize watermark” with “% aspect ration preserved”, it just doesn’t work. It will work with other image formats, but I need the transparent background. The PNG file will work if I select “% of image size” but then the signature only works on certain size file, otherwise it will be distorted.

  6. Hi Amy,
    Yes You need to download the ImageMagick to get this to work:
    “To get this to work you also need to download ImageMagick (Currently I have version “ImageMagick-6.4.4-Q16) which is the image engine used with this plugin: http://www.imagemagick.org

  7. Im having problems here. In your comment to Amy you said

    Hi Amy,
    Yes You need to download the ImageMagick to get this to work:
    “To get this to work you also need to download ImageMagick (Currently I have version “ImageMagick-6.4.4-Q16) which is the image engine used with this plugin: http://www.imagemagick.org“

    I dont what you want me to download on your site. There is no IMageMagick -6.4.4-Q16. ? Im confused.

    Please help,

    p.s. If I can do this just in lightroom….could you please let me know what I need to click on?

    Thanks,

  8. Hi Pierre,
    I’ve many problems with the Mogrify installation. I don’t understand what file must be associated with Lightroom in the empty space of the mogrify application. I have windows 64bit 7, may cause problems?

  9. Thanks for the reply, but the problem is in the third paragraph:

    “In the Mogrify Configuration panel which is now showing on the right, press ‘Choose’, browse to the ImageMagick installation (e.g. C:\Program Files\ImageMagick-6.4.1-Q16 – this will vary with the version of ImageMagick) and choose mogrify.exe”

    There is no file called “mogrify.exe” in the “ImageMagick” folder!

    thanks for your time
    Met

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