how to place a copyright notice in the bottom right corner automatically, using photoshop actions

photoshop actions allow you to record and automate frequently used procedures, much like the “record macro” feature does in microsoft office.
for example you could automatically insert a text or image into a photo, move it to the top left corner (0/0), set opacity etc., and merge the layers.
it’s that easy! well, almost.

usually, copyright notices are placed in the bottom right corner of a photo, so you’ll get a problem if you’re working with different image sizes – i.e. landscape and portrait orientation.
the top corner will always be at 0/0 pixels, but the position of the bottom right corner is variable.

i’ve been searching for a solution to this for a very long time, and eventually settled with two separate photoshop actions – one for standard 640×480 (landscape), and one for 480×640 (portrait) photos. everything else had to be modified manually.

then, cemal ekin posted a very valuable comment on alex king’s blog, which lets me do exactly what i want:

As I understand it, you have a text layer and you would like to position it on the lower right corner of the image offset by a given number of pixels from the bottom and the right edges. You can even have the standard text in a separate file if you like.
This process can be automated via an action too. Here it goes:

1. Make sure you have a background layer, if you don’t, create a blank layer anywhere then from the menu “Layers/New Background from this layer” options create a background layer.

2. Put your text anywhere on the stack, even bring it from a separate file and drag it on to your image that you want to stamp

3. Select the background and the text layers only (click on the BG layer to target it, then Ctrl-click on the gray area of the text layer)

4. Go to “Layer/Align/Bottom” and then “Layer/Align/Right”; now the text is touching the edges

5. Target the text layer only by clicking on the layer icon

6. Make sure that you have the “Pick tool” (press V to do that)

7. Using the up and left arrow keys move the text a set number of pixels from the bottom and the right edges

All the steps allow easy action creation, if you are careful, you can SLOWLY repeat the steps after you explore it once or twice while the action recording is turned on.

Enjoy,
Cemal

4 thoughts on “how to place a copyright notice in the bottom right corner automatically, using photoshop actions

  1. Perfect! I have been trying to solve this issue for some time. This works great.

  2. I have to log in to thank you after all that time struggling with the manual procedures. Thank you!

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