University Library
Photoshop - Watermarking a 360 image
Allen Brown, Thomas Sawano | Fall 2021
Content
You should watermark your images if you are looking to get rid of the tripod at the bottom of your images or you would like to display a watermark that shows the image is owned by a particular organization or person.
The guide was used with images from the Dead Central Exhibit in the McHenry Library.
Before starting, make sure you have a 360 image in equirectangular format and a watermark you would like to place over the camera in the photo.
1. To begin, open Photoshop and open both the 360 image and watermark image that you'll be using.
2. Once you open your images in Photoshop, go to the tab with your 360 image. It should look something like this.
As you can see, the image is being displayed as if it's a flat piece of paper. We need to convert it to a 360 image that we can interact with.
3. To convert the image to a 360 view, select: 3D → Spherical Panorama → New Panorama Layer from Selected Layer(s).
4. Once your image is converted, it should look like a "normal" 360 image.
5. From here, you can rotate the camera down to see the tripod that your image was taken from.
NOTE: If you selected another tool by accident, you can select the move tool [or press (V) on your keyboard].
6. Now that you're facing the right way, switch over to your watermark image and copy it. You can do this by pressing Ctrl+A to select all and then pressing Ctrl+C or going to edit -> copy.
Note: Use command instead of control for Mac users.
7. With your watermark copied to the clipboard, go back to your 360 image and paste it into the scene.
8. Depending on the size of the watermark image, it may be larger or smaller than your tripod. To scale the image, press Ctrl+T to enter "transform" mode and drag the corners to enlarge or shrink the image to the size of your tripod. To rotate the image, click one of the four boxes at the corner of the image and drag as desired.
9. Once scaled and transformed to the right size and orientation, press enter to complete the changes. If you want to resize it again, follow the above procedure again to scale and transform the image.
10. When you have placed the watermark over the tripod, right click whichever layer the watermark is on (layers found on the right-hand panel) and select "merge down". This will merge your watermark onto the original 360 image.
11. Now that the watermark image is merged onto the background layer, we can export the image. To export your image, select: 3D -> Spherical Panorama -> Export Panorama.
12. Save the image in a directory and you are done! When everything is done correctly your new image should look something like this.
Notice the watermark is now attached to the bottom of the image.
The land on which we gather is the unceded territory of the Awaswas-speaking Uypi Tribe. The Amah Mutsun Tribal Band, comprised of the descendants of indigenous people taken to missions Santa Cruz and San Juan Bautista during Spanish colonization of the Central Coast, is today working hard to restore traditional stewardship practices on these lands and heal from historical trauma.
The land acknowledgement used at UC Santa Cruz was developed in partnership with the Amah Mutsun Tribal Band Chairman and the Amah Mutsun Relearning Program at the UCSC Arboretum.
Santa Cruz, CA