Watermarking photos using GIMP - now much easier

Few months back I wrote about a custom GIMP Script I use for watermarking the photos. In that post I briefly mentioned about another script which can watermark files in a specified directory. Thanks my friend Yogi's interest in the scripts, I made some modifications and now we have a slightly better script in which all the parameters can be changed from a window.

Follow these instructions to install the new script.

1. Download GIMP from http://gimp.org install it.
2. Download the script EasyWM.scm
   
3. Save the script in the script folder of gimp installation. In GIMP select Edit->Preferences. In the preferences window expand the "Folders" in the left pane and select Scripts. You will be able find the scripts directories listed in the right pane. Make sure that the file is saved with the extension .scm.
   
4. Restart GIMP.
5. Open an image using GIMP and the menu EasyWM be visible. Select the sub-menu item EasyWM and the following screen will pop up.

Change the directory, font, font size and text and the text color to suite your needs and press OK. The script will modify all the JPG files in the specified directory.

Caution : The script will modify the files in the specified directory and this operation is irreversible. I would strongly advice to use a separate directory and *copy* images to this directory to run this script.

The script will try to position the text based on the font size and text length. However the x offset and y offset can be used to fine tune the position of the text. The offset can be positive or negative values.

The default values in the above screen are set in the following section of the code and you can change them to suit your needs.

SF-STRING "Directory" "C:\\Prime\\Blog\\export\\*.JPG"
SF-FONT "Font Name" "Flat Brush"
SF-STRING "Text" "http://primej.blogspot.com"
SF-VALUE "Font Size (px)" "25"
SF-VALUE "x Offset" "0"
SF-VALUE "y Offset" "0"
SF-COLOR "Color" "#000000"

If you do not see the new menu item, make sure that the script is saved to the correct directory and with the extension .scm
In Linux the file names are case sensitive and the JPG part should match that of the files being modified.
The EasyWM sub menu will not be enabled if no images are opened in GIMP. Either open a image or refresh the scripts by selecting the "Filters->Script-Fu->Refresh Scripts" option.

Watermarking photos using GIMP

Some of my friends were interested in knowing how I add my name at the lower right side of the images I post here. The short answer is that I use a GIMP script to get this done. The long answer follows:

Few years back one fine day I decided to put my name in some photos and started editing the photos with GIMP. However, manually adding a text in the images turned out to be difficult and the text position were inconsistent across images. So in lines with Unix philosophy of "if you have to do something twice, write a script", I ventured into writing this script. I read few Script-Fu tutorials and managed to write this script. Please excuse the usage of my name all over the script.

Follow these steps to this script.

1. Download GIMP from http://www.gimp.org and install it.
2. Download the script Prime.scm
3. Save the script in the script folder of gimp installation. In GIMP select Edit->Preferences. In the preferences window expand the "Folders" in the left pane and select Scripts. You will be able find the scripts directories listed in the right pane. Make sure that the file is saved with the extension .scm.
   
4. Restart GIMP.
5. Open an image using GIMP and the menu Prime will be visible. Select the menu item Prime and the text will be added at the bottom right hand.

Some changes will be required to get your name in there. Follow these steps to get it done.

In the script, change the words 'Your text goes here' to the text you want to put in the image.
Adjust the numeric values in the following lines so that your text is at the right position:
(x (- width 175)) ; Set the x coordinate.
(y (- height 40)) ; Set the y coordinate.

To change the color of the text, change the RGB values in the following line :
(gimp-context-set-foreground '(120 120 120)) ; Set the text colour

Restart GIMP once these changes are done.

It is a pain to open individual files, select the menu and save it. So I wrote another script that will make changes in all the files in a given folder. Things worked fine till the Script-Fu syntax changed in a newer version of GIMP and the scripts stopped working. I managed to rewrite the above script for the new version of GIMP one day but didn't get a chance to fix the other script. If I get enough time and patience, I will fix it one day and post it here.

Edit 8/7/2010 : Fixed the script, details here : http://primej.blogspot.com/2010/07/watermarking-photos-using-gimp-now-much.html