04 Add a white stroke
There’s one more thing to take care of. This watermark will show up well enough against a light background, but could disappear completely against a dark one, so the trick I use is to add a layer style to the layer, giving it a Stroke of 2 pixels with the colour set to white. This way, the text will always show up (either the black text or white outline) whatever colour it’s displayed against.
Now I save this image as a new PSD document somewhere I can find it again when I start up Aperture…
05 Aperture’s export options
When you export an image from Aperture, you can choose one of may export presets supplied by default. I’ve chosen ‘JPEG – Fit within 1024 x 1024’ for my web images, but then I’ve opened the menu again and selected ‘Edit’ from the bottom of the list.
06 Watermarking options
In the Image Export dialog that opens next, check the Show Watermark box that appears half way down on the right. Choose a position (I’ve chosen Lower Right), then click the Choose Image button to find your Photoshop file – it’s previewed in the area above. Now click OK to save the new preset.
07 Watermarked images
And here’s the result. All I had to do was choose the correct export preset from the list, and Aperture resized the photo, located the watermark file and superimposed it in the bottom right corner. And you can do this for whole batches of images, of course, not just one picture at a time.
See also
More Aperture tutorials