Issues with LR's watermark feature

[tingyat]

Hi,

Just wondering if anyone is experiencing issues with LR's watermark tool/preset using graphic based watermarks?

I'm using the term "graphic based" here as opposed to text based watermarks which can be set up within the watermark tool/preset in LR.

The issue I'm having is that all my graphics based watermarks applied while using LR look "mushy" and soft. Prior to working with this feature in LR, was round-tripping my images through PS and had no issues there - the watermark was as sharp and as clear as I needed it to be. As I understand it, this was meant to be something that was "fixed up" or enhanced in LR 5?

Of the 2 attached files, rc_wtrmrk02 was created using LR and rc_wtrmrk01 was done using PS6/CC. And yes, while these graphics started off as text on a transparent background, they were saved as PNG files to give me the desired final result. Worked fine in PS, not so good in LR.

I'm using LR 5.6 on a Win 8 64-bit platform.

Any suggestions or comments on what might going on here and how to best fix this would be appreciated?

TIA - Rogan

[Wayne Fox]

What was the resolution/size of the graphic file compared to the resolution of the output file?  Looks like LR had to uprez the graphic.  Was the PS version with the watermark still as a text layer on the file?  (so it wasn’t a bitmap so it will uprez and be smooth at pretty much any size).

I don’t have any problems using this feature, but my watermark graphic file is pretty large ... about 1200 pixels.  Forcing LR to always downrez it.

[tingyat]

Hi Wayne,

Image-wise we're looking at watermark file size of about 250 px applied to an image of 768 px - this while applying watermarks in PS. In LR, don't really know. In LR there are 3 options there - Proportion, Fit and Fill - and each does something different.

On the watermark file created in PS, the layers - as in text on a transparent background - are flattened before conversion to a PNG file. In the past, this watermark was applied via an action in PS.

Seems like I may need to do a RTFM about file sizes and how to optimize them for use in LR.

On the upside to this, may be "soft" watermarks are more difficult to remove - just a thought.