Sherma's because it's mine..

Calculating The Best Dimensions For Lightroom Watermarks

In Lightroom, a watermark is sized on the image using the watermark in proportion to the image.  In other words, to determine the size of space the watermark takes up on the image, you will use a percentage.

For this tutorial, we’re going to use a photo that is 625px wide x 300px high to add the watermark to.

We will use two different sized watermarks:
156 x 75 pixels
625 x 300 pixels
and apply them to the  photo in Lightroom using the 25, 50, & 75% proportion properties.

The purpose is to show the benefits of using a larger watermark at any size 100% or lower, as opposed to enlarging a smaller watermark beyond it’s full size.

The easiest way to find the percentage (proportion) of an image is to select “Image Size” and change the properties from “pixels” to “percentage” and then the numerical value from 100 to what ever percent you would like.  Below, I changed it to “25″ and clicked “ok”.

I then selected “Image Size” again and because Photoshop defaults to “pixels” (if your editor doesn’t, then change it from percentage back to pixels here), I saw that the image was now 156px by 75px, so I knew that I could make a .png watermark by those dimensions (156×75) and as long as I chose “25″ or lower, as the proportion value, my watermark would look clear.

For Lightroom, I personally prefer to make the watermark’s dimensions the same size as the photo I will be working with.  One reason is because it doesn’t lose it’s clarity when scaled any size up to 100% of the photo.  Unless you’re using a vector (.svg) image, it will begin to fade the more it is enlarged beyond 100%.  See examples below.

In the first example, I set the watermark properties as shown below, making it 25% (proportion = 25) of the photo’s size:

This is what the smaller watermark looks like at 25%.
Remember that it’s full, 100% size IS 25% of the photo we’re applying it to.

..and this is what the larger watermark (same size as the photo: 625 x 300 px) looks like scaled down to 25%:

Not much difference.

Now let’s look at them both after changing the proportion property from 25 to 50%:

The smaller (156 x75) pixel watermark:

As you can clearly see, it’s beginning to fade and become fuzzy.

Here is the large watermark, scaled to the same 50%:

It’s actually becoming more clear as it enlarges. It’s still only half of it’s (and the photo’s) full size.

We’ll take it up to 75%, first using the small watermark again (which will now be 3x it’s full size):

Of course it’s faded and even more fuzzier than before.

Now look at the large watermark at 75%:

It’s still very much clear and would look the same at 100% (or 100 proportion).

I could go off into a completely new topic of watermarking here and that is the opacity feature. (For those who are completely new to photo editing and watermarking, play with the “opacity” feature for awhile.  It’s a must if you don’t want your watermark to be dark to the point of distraction).
~Sherma


I hope this helps a few, leave a comment if you have questions!
(please remember to share! :)