Thursday, August 5, 2010

Adding a watermark to your card and other shares - the FancyNancy way :)

Someone asked how I added watermarks to my scrapbook kits, card and scrapbook page shares, and as I shared it on another group, I thought perhaps some of you might want to know!

So, here's how I do it:
Launch PowerPoint
Insert> Word Art, Selecting a white/gray combo style
Type what you want it to say, then, change the font to what you want, and hit OK
Save the PPT file (where you will be able to always get to it easily) as your working copy of your watermark, since the SU copyright date changes yearly to include the coming year, for example, I just updated mine to read "All images©Stampin' Up! 1990-2011" - this way, you can still come back and change it without recreating it each year.
Click on the WordArt piece so that the lines around it appear, then RIGHT CLICK and select SAVE AS PICTURE
Navigate to your desktop or other handy location, save it as something you can find there
(You only have to do all this above ONCE, except when you change the date or your name, then you go back to the original PPT file, fix it, save the PPT, right click and save the WordArt as a picture and go)

To add it to a picture, I launch PowerPoint, go to INSERT>PICTURE>FROM FILE
Find the snapshot of the card or layout you want to share and insert it
Then, go to INSERT>PICTURE>FROM FILE and find your watermark and add it (doing it in this order automatically puts the watermark on a layer in front of the card share as it builds from bottom to top, like MDS does).
Select both the watermark and the picture by holding down SHIFT and click on the picture, click on the watermark
Then right click and select GROUP>GROUP
Then right click and select SAVE AS PICTURE

Once you have done this once or twice, it is so easy to do, and if your computer came with Microsoft Office on it like mine, it costs you not a cent to do!

You could also do this in MDS with similar steps, except that PPT is the only one I know with the option to group various objects and right click to SAVE AS PICTURE, which is pretty fast to do....

You can also insert MDS created pictures that you've saved as JPGs to share in there to watermark....

Just one thought on watermarking - what has worked for me for years... if you have questions when you try it, email me - I am back at school already - (yeah, hurrah, but I really am grateful for my job, even though this educator got no summer, lol)

And even though the 'stros lost last night, we STILL won the series against the Cards -

GO ASTROS!
:)n

4 comments:

Shannon Willis said...

Nancy, you are a doll face! I have been trying to figure this out soooo many times. I even started a discussion on SC. I have used Power Point before, but never knew it would save the images as a PNG.

Thanks for sharing this awesome information

Blessings,

Shannon Willis
www.shannonscropstop.blogspot.com

Nanci said...

Thanks for sharing this!
I'm following you from SC. I hope you'll join me too!
www.crafthavenretreats.blogspot.com

Patty Mickle said...

Hi,
I found you through SC. My blog is www.pattycreates.blogspot.com.

Penny Hanuszak said...

Wow this always mistified me. You make it sound simple. I'm following you from SC. I hope you join me too!

http://pennytokensstampinspot.blogspot.com