Ideas for watermarking design proofs with a background pattern

[oguzd]

Hello!

I’m sure there are others sending design proofs to customers by taking an export from the preview.
Is there a practical way to watermark the proofs with a dim background pattern so that at least it’s a bit dissuasive for the customers to go seek for cheaper options using your work?

Thank you for ideas!

[berainlb (PY)]

2 ideas for potentially how to handle this:

1. Literally create your watermark design in LightBurn and add it to a separate layer with a low DPI. Have this be generated along with the rest of the Preview.
2. Use a separate application to apply the watermark to a saved Preview after the fact.

[oguzd]

Thank you. Both are indeed adding the visual layer for the purpose.

1. This works nicely with a low dpi and the related layer being on the back at the layer queue - also even better by using the power scale on that layer at a lower level - however, the preview naturally considers the so called watermark layer as an output and adjusts the estimated work times accordingly.
   This may work as aa preview for design proof purpose only - the watermark design can be saved externally and imported when needed before taking a snap from the preview.
   I have added a sample file I just worked on and tried it - the visibility can be even lowered to 5 or 10% power level (currently 20)

wmtry1.lbrn2 (1.2 MB)

2. Sure - to add a shallow foreground layer at an external program before sending it to client.

I think I will go with #1 when needed - it could be great if something like a tool layer would have been possible to use. I wonder if there’s any other way we couldn’t think of apart from these two.

[berainlb (PY)]

@oguzd

I wonder if there’s any other way we couldn’t think of apart from these two.

There are likely a countless number of ways to handle this.

If you’re looking to explore this more then:
3. Not sure what OS you’re running but you could get an application that overlays an image on top of LightBurn that has a persistent watermark. In this case, you could take a screenshot of Preview with the overlay showing or open the saved Preview and then take another screenshot.
4. You could setup a script that automatically adds the watermark to a Saved image. You could take this farther by settings up something that detects new images in a directory and applying the script. This way there would be no explicit secondary step.
5. There are some printer drivers or print utilities that allow watermarks to be added during the printing process. You could save the Preview and “print” it to PDF or possibly an image depending on the mechanism and have the watermark applied as part of that process
6. Not an immediate solution but you could potentially put in a feature request to have watermarking explicitly added to LightBurn.