Ever since I discovered that some of my images are popping up in Google Image Search, especially when you search for pregnancy, I realized I should start “signing” my photos. I have played around with different formats, but ultimately I have settled for a frame with my site address. A lot of photographers watermark the actual image, and I understand why, but I’m all about sharing the love. I’d like the return traffic, thus the blog address, but I’m not worried about someone “stealing” my images. If I was, I wouldn’t put them on a public blog!
Nevertheless, marking my images for this blog was taking up a lot of time, to the point where I wasn’t posting as often. Then I decided to create a Photoshop action that would resize, frame and mark my image all in one click. It’s simple to do!
This action assumes you prefer a set width for your photos like I do. If you want to set a max height for portraits and max width for landscapes so the overall size is the same, you’ll have to create two separate actions. Personally, I like my photos to fill the width of the blog column, so if they are portrait, they are really tall. I like that.
Also, if you want to use your own logo rather than text, you should make sure it is ready before starting this action. (See step seven for details.)
Step One – Open up an image in Photoshop. It doesn’t really matter which one, because you’re only going to use it to create the action. You can simply discard the changes when you’re done if you don’t want to run the action on this test image. For this tutorial, I will use a photo I took of Micah during yesterday’s “photoshoot.”
Step Two – Create a new Action. Click on the little button in the Action panel that looks like a turning page. Then, name your action. It doesn’t matter what you call it. You could even name it the “Awesome Action,” as long as you remember what it does. Once you create the action it will instantly start recording. Everything you do from this point until you hit the little stop button, will be recorded in the action.
Step Three – Resize your image to 50 pixels less than your goal width. This will give you room to put a 25 pixel white border around your image. Obviously, if you want the border to be smaller, use that figure. If you want the border to be 10 pixels, then resize the image to be 20 pixels smaller than your goal width. When I say goal width, I mean the max width of the photo as it should display on your blog. For my blog, the largest photo that will fit is 575 pixels, so at this point in the action I resize my image to a width of 525.
To resize, use the key command Alt+Ctrl+I (press and hold Alt and Ctrl and hit “I”). Make sure the little box by “Constrain Proportions” is checked, otherwise your image will be all wacky.
Step Four – Duplicate your background layer. This is so you can add a drop shadow later. Simply right-click the background layer and select Duplicate. You can leave it named “background copy” if you wish.
Step Five – Change the canvas size – twice. Use the key command Alt+Ctrl+C to open the Canvas Size dialog box. Click the check box next to “Relative.” The first time you’ll add 50 pixels to the height and width, with the anchor in the center so that extra canvas is distributed evenly on all four sides. The second time, you’ll click the top center square for the anchor so that all the arrows point down and out, which will only add an additional canvas to the bottom. The second time, you should not add any pixels to the width by leaving it at zero. Set the height to 50. Be sure that the drop down box next to each number is set to “pixels” and not inches. Also be sure to set the canvas extension color to “white.”
When you’re done your image should look like this:
Step Six – Add a drop shadow to your background copy layer. This is super easy to do, make sure you have the duplicate layer selected and go to Layer > Layer Style > Drop Shadow. Set the Distance, Spread and Size to 10, 5 and 10 as shown below.
Step Seven -You have a choice to make here:
Add your text. Using the Text tool, click somewhere in the white space below your image and start typing. Set the paragraph style to center. Everything else is up to you. Click on your Move Tool (the default arrow) again so you can select the text layer and the background layer at the same time. Do this by holding down the Ctrl key and clicking each layer in the Layers panel. Then go to Layer > Align > Bottom Edges and then again Layer > Align > Horizontal Centers.
OR
Add your logo. Create a Photoshop document (with a white background) that is the same size as your bottom white square area (for this tutorial that is 575 x 100) and design your logo on it. Do this ahead of time, before beginning your action. Then, for step seven, instead of adding text, go to File > Place and choose your logo. Hit “enter” to place it (don’t resize) then go to Layer > Align > Bottom Edges. Personally, I like this method better than text because I have more control over spacing and I can add an image such as a logo. Even though my “logo” is just text, I found that it was much easier to get it centered perfectly by making it an image first.
Step Eight – Flatten the image (right click the background layer and select Flatten)
Step Nine – Stop recording your action. Simply hit the little square in the Action panel. Your action is done and ready to use!
To use your action, open up an image and double click the action, or open several that you want to use and use the File > Automate dialog box. Automation could be a whole other tutorial by itself, so I’m going to assume you know how to use Actions this way. If not, I’m sure you can find it on the internet somewhere. I’m to0 exhausted to go through that right now! 
Note: The pink is my Photoshop background color, not part of the image. If you are sick of staring at a gray background like I was, you can change the color under Edit > Preferences > Interface.
Her eyes just pop, don’t they?
