By ebyrne41 on

I'm a bit perplexed. I have recently installed the Imagecache module (6.x-2.0-beta10) and the Imagecache Actions module (6.x-1.7), the plan being to add watermarks to original images that I uplaod to the Image Gallery. Have activated Imagecache Canvas Actions and Imagecache Text Actions. I then in Administer » Site building » ImageCache, added a preset 'Original', and created actions 'Text' and 'Overlay (watermark)'. The preview link displays what I believe will be an example of what I will end up with (overlayed image and text). Having installed 'Image' module and activated 'Image Import', I then proceed to import an image and add it to a gallery. However the original image linked to in the gallery does not have the watermark I created. I tried same with the 'Prevew' image, same unsuccessful result.

Am I missing an obvious step? Please advise.
thanks, Ed

⋅ Categories: Drupal 6.x

Comments

joecanti’s picture

joecanti commented

Im not sure whats going on here, but I think you are calling the original rather than the imagecache preset. When your image is uploaded the original is still accessible - and the image module probably gets that. I think it may pull its own images.

You're better off forgeting the image module and getting the imagefield/imageapi combination. Then you can add an image field to your content type. You can then click on 'display fields' and choose which imagecache preset is displayed on your node.

Alteratively use views to call different presets - and this is probably the prefered way as you can do so much more. EG make a list of 'thumbnail' preset images and when clicked have them open up another preset in a lightbox.

See the excellent screencast tutorials on Drupaltherapy.com - the views slideshow and also the imagecache/imagefield one...

Finally if your sure all that is correct and you are actually calling the preset, you could try using an overlay image instead of the text - make a png image all transparent, but with the copyright text placed where you want it. I seem to remember the text not working well for me, but the overlay image being much better.

And finally! If it's just you uploading save yourself the extra module and do it in a program like fastone photo resizer - a batch photo resizer that can also add a watermark. After lots of playing around I've decided the best way is to do all the processing of an image before uploading. Of course, if you have lots of users uploading then its different.

Joe

jlab’s picture

jlab commented

I think the original image should be watermarked as well... Because some clever user will figure out the path to the original images to download them.

You could of course use Drupal's Private Downloads method but that will add a lot of overhead to the web server.

I sit with two scenarios where I need one imagecache preset to handle the file manipulation of the original image.

The functionality would make a lot use cases very practical and easier to build.