...that Your Audience Won't Hate.

...that your audience won't hate.

This is a method I started using when NFTs were on the rise - thieves would have to put actual work into getting rid of the mark - and one that I am now grateful for with the arrival of AI. Why? Because anyone who tries to train an AI on my work will end up with random, disruptive color blobs.

I can't say for sure it'll stop theft entirely, but it WILL make your images annoying for databases to incorporate, and add an extra layer of inconvenience for thieves. So as far as I'm concerned, that's a win/win.

I'll be showing the steps in CSP, but it should all be pretty easy to replicate in Photoshop.

Now: let's use the above image as our new signature file. I set mine to be 2500 x 1000 pixels when I'm just starting out.

Note that your text should not have a lot of anti-aliasing, so using a paint brush to start isn't going to work well with this method. Just use the standard G-Pen if you're doing this by hand, or, just use the text tool and whichever font you prefer.

Once that's done, take your magic wand tool, and select all the black. Here are the magic wand settings I'm using to make the selections:

All selected?

Good.

Now, find a brush with a scattering/tone scraping effect. I use one like this.

You can theoretically use any colors you want for this next part, but I'd recommend pastels as they tend to blend better.

Either way, let's add some color to the text.

Once that's finished,

You're going to want to go to Layer Property, and Border Effect

You'll be given an option of choosing color and thickness. Choose black, and go for at least a 5 in thickness. Adjust per your own preferences.

Now create a layer beneath your sig layer, and merge the sig down onto the blank layer.

This effectively 'locks in' the border effect, which is exactly what we want.

Hooray, you've finished your watermark!

Now let's place that bad boy into your finished piece.

You'll get the best mileage out of a mark if you can place it over a spot that isn't black of white, since you'll get better blending options that way. My preference is for Overlay.

From here, I'll adjust the opacity to around 20-25, depending on the image.

If you don't have a spot to use overlay, however, there's a couple other options. For white, there's Linear Burn, which imho doesn't look as good, but it still works in a pinch.

And for lots of black, you have Linear Light

Either way, you're in business!

EDIT since this has escaped my usual circles, and folks aren't as familiar with my personal usage:

An example of one of my own finished pieces, with watermark, so you can see what I mean about 'relatively unobtrusive'-- I try to at least use them as framing devices, or let them work with the image somehow (or, at the very least, not actively against it).

I know it's a bummer for some people to "ruin" their work with watermarks, which is part of the reason I developed this mark in particular. Its disruption is about as minimal as I can make it while still letting it serve its intended purpose.

There's other methods, too, of course! But this is the one I use, and the one I can speak on. Hope it helps some of you!

dark urkel tribute hd

(twitter)

I love this little man and his neighbors.

Wally Darling belongs to @partycoffin. Check them out, their stuff's really cool!

if non-hispanics reblogged it would help a ton!

so, i've been noticing lately that english speakers that don't support neopronouns have been saying stuff like "neopronouns are for americans, no one else uses neopronouns in other languages! they're confusing to non-natives!" and it honestly upsets me SO MUCH, because that's simply not true! neopronouns exist all around the world, and i'm here to speak for hispanic neopronoun users as an argentine myself.

spanish has neopronouns, hispanics use neopronouns! it's not debatable!

spanish does not have an equivalent to they/them, "someone dropped their wallet, if i find them i'll give it back to them" would be "a alguien se le cayó su billetera, si lo encuentro se la devolveré" (someone dropped his wallet, if i find him i'll give it back to him).

so, since there's many non-binary people that felt like they needed a gender-neutral pronoun for themselves, elle/le was invented as opposed to él/lo.

as you may know, a neopronoun is a pronoun that is not official to a language (although some neopronouns may become official), and since elle/le is not official to spanish, it's a neopronoun to us.

and no, this isn't our only neopronoun.

we have others such as elli/li, ellu/lu, il/li, etc. that do not have a translation to english, kinda like how xe/xem, ze/zir, ae/aer, etc. do not have a translation to spanish.

and yes, these are actually used, and not only online: i've had many friends in my country that used these pronouns among nounself pronouns (a friend that used él/ella/elli/quack, another one that used elle/ella, etc.)

so, i've made an il/li/-i pronoun flag!

il/li are pronouns derived from italian, and they're one of the most common neopronouns around here!

[ID: On the left, there's flag with 5 stripes all of the same size, the colors of these stripes from top to bottom are: mint green, turquoise, white, light purple, and brown. The image on the right is the same flag with the color-meanings of each stripe, and from top to bottom, these are the meanings: Mint green - italian origins of the pronouns, Turquoise - disabled and neurodivergent users, White - neopronouns around the world, Light purple - trans hispanics, and Brown - people of color hispanics. End ID]

this is the flag with its meanings, any hispanic / spanish-speaker that IDs with these pronouns is free to use it!

IT IS ACE WEEK!

So let's talk about asexuality! This is an introduction trying to cover as much as possible in a little format, so its mostly surface level stuff. You're gonna have to dig on your own :P

For more information, I recommend checking out aceweek.org or acesandaros.org ! You can also read up on ace history through the Asexual Manifesto by Lisa Orlando !

Actual links and Image description coming in a reblog ;)