Affinity Photo Signature

[AHARRIS22]

Hi all,

Is there a way to put a signature on multiple photos? I have got about 50 photos I want to put my signature on before I post them online. 
 

I have a signature paint brush set up but this would mean manually opening painting and then saving each photo. 
 

Any ideas would be much appreciated,

Thanks

Aaron

[v_kyr]

Try to use it in a macro with batch processing instead. Search the forum and youtube videos for how to do that.

• Watermark your photos with a custom image brush

• Make A Watermark Macro

• Signature/text layer in a macro for batch processing

• etc.

[h_d]

It takes a bit of setting up, but you can do it with a macro and a batch job.

Open one image. Create a new pixel layer, create your signature on that, then Cut the pixel layer.

Display the Macro panel and the Library panel. (View-Studio-Macro, View-Studio-LIbrary).

If you haven't already got one, use the Library panel to create a new category.

Click the Record button.

Paste the layer, Flatten the image.

Click the Stop button in the Macro panel.

Click the Add to Library button in the Macro panel.

Give the Macro a name and add it to your new category. 

Close your image without saving.

From the File menu, choose New Batch Job...

These are the settings I used:

 

Click Add at the bottom of the left-hand panel and choose the files you want to process. In the top right-hand panel, specify where and how you want to save them. 

Under Available Macros, choose the category you created earlier. 

This will display the name of the macro you just recorded (mine is called Paste & flatten). 

Click Apply so that its name appears under Applied Macros.

Once you're happy, click OK and let Photo do the work. 10 photos took just a few seconds - they don't even open on screen.

A couple of thoughts:

If you choose Save Into and specify a destination folder, the original images should remain untouched.

The macro I suggested will paste whatever you happen to have cut or copied last, so you'll have to do a single cut or copy of your signature layer immediately before running the batch job.

 

[AHARRIS22]

Hi again,

Well I gave the macro a go tonight it sort of worked. I set it up by using the brush tool but not all my photos are the same size is this didn't work for all the photos. Is there a way to set it up so it always drops the logo/watermark in the bottom right?

Thanks

Aaron

[v_kyr]

See this video "MACRO recording to watermark your photos. How to ?" from Hvdb Photography, which gives you some ideas about the overall APh macro limitations!

AFAIK there hasn't changed much into this direction over APh version iterations, so that macros would offer in some way to record relative positionings/placements (dynamically determined) related to the used on image/document sizes. Thus macros still place to absolute (during recording) determined pixel positions and not in a more flexible dynamiclally manner ( as for example relative placements to possibly different loaded image size corners).

That's something a scripting language with a good and rich command set implementation for sure would offer to handle more graceful.

 

[h_d]

1 hour ago, v_kyr said:

That's something a scripting language with a good and rich command set implementation for sure would offer to handle more graceful.

For sure. <AppleScript>

[carl123]

 

 

 

1

9 hours ago, AHARRIS22 said:

Hi again,

Well I gave the macro a go tonight it sort of worked. I set it up by using the brush tool but not all my photos are the same size is this didn't work for all the photos. Is there a way to set it up so it always drops the logo/watermark in the bottom right?

Thanks

Aaron

I think these options (in the library panel) are supposed to resolve that problem - post back if you get it working - there is limited information on how to activate them

From the help file

• Alignment—change how the macro elements are aligned relative to the document's bounds. For example, if the macro places a watermark image, you could choose Bottom right to place it at the bottom right of the current document.

 

[R C-R]

8 hours ago, h_d said:

10 hours ago, v_kyr said:

That's something a scripting language with a good and rich command set implementation for sure would offer to handle more graceful.

For sure. <AppleScript>

As I remember it, they said they ruled out AppleScript because it is Mac only but they would like to someday add support for a platform-independent scripting language, but probably not until version 2 or later.

As for what @carl123 mentioned about the new alignment options, I would love to know how they are supposed to work because they don't seem to do anything on my Mac.

[carl123]

 

 

 

 

28 minutes ago, R C-R said:

 I would love to know how they are supposed to work because they don't seem to do anything on my Mac.

I can't seem to get them to work on Windows either

The only time I have seen any effect of the new Library Panel options was in this thread

https://forum.affinity.serif.com/index.php?/topic/92747-makros-not-working/&amp;do=findComment&amp;comment=492479

When it worked on an Affinity supplied macro

I have yet to see how we (users) are supposed to use it (especially so when placing watermarks etc)

 

 

[R C-R]

1 hour ago, carl123 said:

I have yet to see how we (users) are supposed to use it (especially so when placing watermarks etc)

This seems like a perfect candidate for new AP 1.7 video tutorial. Annoyingly, in the only one I can find we can't even see the alignment menu buttons because James Ritson's inset covers them up.

[AHARRIS22]

So it might look like the only way to do it is the long way and manually put the logo/watermark on each photo.

[walt.farrell]

7 hours ago, R C-R said:

As for what @carl123 mentioned about the new alignment options, I would love to know how they are supposed to work because they don't seem to do anything on my Mac.

They would not apply in the Batch Job dialog. They would only work for direct invocation of the macro from the Library panel.

Does that help explain why they aren't doing anything?

[v_kyr]

16 minutes ago, walt.farrell said:

They would not apply in the Batch Job dialog. They would only work for direct invocation of the macro from the Library panel.

Does that help explain why they aren't doing anything?

LOL, of course.

[walt.farrell]

3 minutes ago, v_kyr said:

LOL, of course.

The options would certainly be more helpful if they existed in the Batch Job dialog, too, or possibly of the macro itself

[v_kyr]

32 minutes ago, AHARRIS22 said:

So it might look like the only way to do it is the long way and manually put the logo/watermark on each photo.

Well, Olivio also gave some good advices here, like using a PDF banner stripe instead etc. - Of course you can also use other software solutions to do such bulk placement (batch processing) of signatures/watermarks onto photos.

 

[v_kyr]

4 minutes ago, walt.farrell said:

The options would certainly be more helpful if they existed in the Batch Job dialog, too, or possibly of the macro itself

Yip, since in it's actual state it looks more like being "the crippled way of cookie crumbles", as it now always needs further user interaction to perform a wanted and right oriented placement.

[R C-R]

1 hour ago, walt.farrell said:

They would not apply in the Batch Job dialog. They would only work for direct invocation of the macro from the Library panel.

 I am talking about direct invocation of the macro from the Library panel, not via batch jobs. If they work for you, could you provide an example of that?

[v_kyr]

59 minutes ago, R C-R said:

 I am talking about direct invocation of the macro from the Library panel, not via batch jobs. If they work for you, could you provide an example of that?

IMO that doesn't do what it is supposed or assumed to do!

If you let's say create some signature text on a transparent background and save that as PDF, then afterwards start to record it's placement into an image in/as a macro (say placement to down right corner or the like), which you afterwards save and add to the macro library for later reuse from there. Now if you reuse that macro from the lib for other resolution  landscape/portrait images, it doesn't do anything useful as a placement and even doesn't react/know anything about those other selectable how and where placement settings. It would as in former APh versions only work for equally sized/resolution images.

[Cecil]

I saved my signature as png on desk top and just drag, drop and scale when needed.  I saw tutorial on YouTube,  very simple.

[AHARRIS22]

2 minutes ago, Cecil said:

I saved my signature as png on desk top and just drag, drop and scale when needed.  I saw tutorial on YouTube,  very simple.

Ye that’s ok doing a handful of photos but when you have got 50+ you want to do it will take a while to go through them. 

[v_kyr]

Also take a look at other dedicated tools (which allow bulk watermarking) for these purposes, like for example:

• TSR Watermark Image (see the free one for Mac/Win there)
• PhotoBulk and an article bout that one here
• Watermark Pro (the free one has a 5 image limit per run)
• WatermarQue (free)
• ImageMagick for cmdline scripting etc.
• 5 Apps to Batch Watermark Photos on Mac
• Gimp and scripting (there are a bunch of such watermarking/signature scripts for Gimp)
• ... and so on ...

You can create your watermark or signature in APh/ADe export as image and then use one such tool for bulk processing.

[walt.farrell]

6 hours ago, R C-R said:

 I am talking about direct invocation of the macro from the Library panel, not via batch jobs. If they work for you, could you provide an example of that?

Thanks. I know I have run at least one test where those options had an effect, but I don't remember what actions I took where the options worked. Sorry.

In testing right now with a macro to simply add a signature to a file, the options had no effect.

[carl123]

8 hours ago, walt.farrell said:

They would not apply in the Batch Job dialog. They would only work for direct invocation of the macro from the Library panel.

Does that help explain why they aren't doing anything?

Macros can call other macros, so Macro A would select the Alignment option in the Library Panel then run Macro B

Macro A would be the one added to the batch job

The bottom line is that until we can get the Alignment options to work in their basic form we cant test any of the more advanced stuff.

Someone needs to tell us (the users) how we should be invoking the alignment options or it needs logging as a bug as nobody seems to be able to get it to work the way we (all) think it should be working.

 

[v_kyr]

According to the help system for the library panel options:

Quote

• Scaling—choose from Stretch, Max fit or Min fit. Changes how elements of the macro are scaled when applied to a document that is a different size. Stretch will contort the macro elements, whereas Max/Min fit will scale them gracefully and maintain the aspect ratio.
• Alignment—change how the macro elements are aligned relative to the document's bounds. For example, if the macro places a watermark image, you could choose Bottom right to place it at the bottom right of the current document.

Scaling has a slightly impact during some testing, but alignment doesn't really work and is crappy.