Now that I’m going to be putting more photos up on the site here, I wanted to automate the workflow as much as possible. One of the things I wanted to do was add a copyright notice to the bottom of each photo. This isn’t as straightforward in a Photoshop action as it could be.

I found these two articles which got me on the right track. Adding the copyright info in the IPTC data in an action is very easy and something I’ve overlooked in the past. Positioning the copyright notice in the image was a bit more difficult.

I had problems using the Align Layers command because of the opacity of one of the layers I was trying to align. I initially had 2 layers, one that was solid black at 30% opacity with a text layer (white) above it at 65% opacity that I combined into a single layer in a file for the purpose of being opened and copied into the photo I am prepping to post on the site. When I used the Align Layers command, it moved the layer too far down and right. It ignored the 35% opacity outer box as a border.

As a hack, I just expanded the layer by a pixel along the right and bottom edges and added a line along those edges at 100% opacity. Now after positioning the layer using the Align Layers command, I just nudge it over and down a pixel to get that 1 pixel line out of the photo. If you know of a better solution than this, please share it in the comments.