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==Watermark Photos with digiKam==

This article originally appeared on [http://scribblesandsnaps.wordpress.com/category/software/open-source/ Scribbles and Snaps] and is produced with permission from Dmitri Popov.

While there are many ways to protect your photos from unauthorized use, ''watermarking'' still remains the simplest and probably the most effective technique that can help you to identify you as the creator and make it difficult to use your works without permission.

Although '''digiKam''' supports watermarking, this feature is hidden so well that you might not even realize that it’s there. This is because the watermarking function in '''digiKam''' is tucked under the <menuchoice>Batch Queue Manager</menuchoice> tool which you can use to watermark multiple photos in one go. Here is how this works in practice. Choose <menuchoice>Tools</menuchoice> -> <menuchoice>Batch Queue Manager</menuchoice> (or press the <keycap>B</keycap> key) to open the <menuchoice>Batch Queue Manager</menuchoice> tool. Drag the photos you want to watermark from a '''digiKam''' album onto the <menuchoice>Queues</menuchoice> pane to add them to the current queue. Click on the <menuchoice>Base Tools</menuchoice> tab in the <menuchoice>Control Panel</menuchoice> pane and double-click on the <menuchoice>Decorate</menuchoice> -> <menuchoice>Add Watermark</menuchoice> tool to add it to the <menuchoice>Assigned Tools</menuchoice> pane.

[[Image:Digikam_watermark.png|thumb|400px|center]]

'''digiKam''' can use text or images as watermarks, and you can choose the desired watermark type in the <menuchoice>Tools Setting</menuchoice> pane. If you want to use the <menuchoice>Image</menuchoice> type, make sure that you already have a graphics file handy. Specify then the available settings such as <menuchoice>Placement Position</menuchoice>, <menuchoice>Rotation</menuchoice>, <menuchoice>Size</menuchoice>, and <menuchoice>Margins</menuchoice>. Next, select the target folder in the <menuchoice>Target</menuchoice> section of the <menuchoice>Queue Settings</menuchoice> pane. In the <menuchoice>Behavior</menuchoice> section, you can specify what the system should do if it detects a file with the same name as the processed one in the target folder. You can either choose to overwrite the existing file or rename the processed file before saving it. You can also use the options available in the <menuchoice>File Renaming</menuchoice> section to specify a renaming rule to automatically rename the processed files.

Once you are satisfied with the settings, hit the <menuchoice>Run</menuchoice> button, and once '''digiKam'''’s finished, you’ll find the watermarked photos in the target folder.

[[Category: Graphics]]
[[Category: Photography]]
[[Category: Tutorials]]