A Guide to Automatic Watermarks: ShareX

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#1

If you are involved in digital art, you will quickly learn the importance of watermarking your artwork.

It’s likely you’ve followed the natural progression of watermarking…
watermarkprogression
Most developers have landed on a clunky final state of using a dedicated watermark layer in all of their projects. This works great but it’s tedious.

What if instead you could just take a screenshot… and it’d be watermarked?
Congratulations! That is exactly what I plan to teach you how to do.

Your title says ShareX but that preview says Gyazo, wtf???

To dissuade the Gyazo haters: I use Gyazo, a lot, it was that bad habit that you just know you should stop, but it’s just so convenient, and you are so invested you couldn’t.

ShareX is objectively 100% a better screenshotting tool than Gyazo; almost all of the Pro features are natively free for ShareX, but this argument has already been played out on the DevForum, and if you want to see why it’s better, you can do so here..

To serve my muscle-memory I created a unique setup that mimics Gyazo (even replaced the icons lol), but under the hood it is ShareX and it saves to my local NAS. People don’t trust custom domains, so its then uploaded to Gyazo, rather than https://i.bxb.gg/

If you don’t have terabytes of data in Gyazo, just stick with Imgur.

Disclaimer: This tutorial is designed for Windows systems, if you use macOS, you are out of luck. :slightly_frowning_face:

The Guide:

  1. Download ShareX, the best screenshotting tool.
    • Feel free to tinker with your After capture tasks, After upload tasks, and Destinations, to fit your liking.
  2. Create your watermark:
    • This is your chance to be expressive, using your tool of choice make your watermark. You should already have this. The easiest, and most common way is to use a font you like to build a text grid, then set the opacity to ~15%. Save it somewhere permanent and keep a note of this location.

    Your canvas should match the resolution of your total screen space, if you have multiple monitors, adjust your canvas size accordingly.

  3. ShareX should be in your toolbar, right-click it and go to Hotkey settings...
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  4. Click Add to create a new hotkey.
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  5. Set your task to Screen capture > Capture region.
  6. Name your hotkey as Watermark via the description prompt.
  7. Enable Override after capture settings, then add Add image effects / watermark.
  8. Go to the Image category and enable Override image settings.
  9. Go to the Effects subcategory and click Image effects configurations...
  10. Click Add > Drawing > Image | (Formerly labelled Image Watermark)
  11. Add your watermark to Image Location.
  12. Set Placement to MiddleCenter, and set Offset to 0, 0.
  13. Toggle AutoHide to False.

At this point you have two routes forward:

OPTION A: Set a Hotkey
14. In Hotkey Settings click the box that says None, then use the hotkey combination you want to use for watermarked screenshots; use Esc to clear the hotkey.

OPTION B: Make a shortcut
For those of you who developed twitch muscle memory to type Gya [ENTER] for your screenshot needs, we can make a shortcut.
15. Navigate to C:\Program Files\ShareX, right-click ShareX.exe and select Create shortcut. It will yell at you and place the shortcut on the desktop.
16. Move to Desktop, and rename the new shortcut to your fancy, such as "ShareX Watermark" or "Gyazo Watermark". Cut the shortcut.
17. Open Run (Win + R), and enter shell:start menu, a new file explorer should open. (C:\Users\%USER%\AppData\Roaming\Microsoft\Windows\Start Menu)
18. Open the folder Programs, and create a new folder called Screenshot Tools. Paste your shortcut in this folder.
19. Right-click the shortcut and select Properties. Add -workflow "Watermark" to the end of the target.

You are done. You can now use the hotkey you established, or custom shortcut to automatically watermark your screenshots.

A reboot might be necessary for the shortcuts to appear in Windows search.

EXTRA:
Since you have made a shortcut for watermarking, you can also make one for normal screenshots and GIFs. Simply create and name desired hotkeys then set your shortcut workflow to match the hotkey name.

If you do decide to ironically name your shortcuts to Gyazo, be sure to uninstall Gyazo so the shortcuts don’t fight. :slight_smile:

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#2

I have a graphic design hobby so to be completely honest. I really appreciate this post. It makes this way easier for me, I don’t have to throw some text over it, I can just press my watermark key bind!

Thank you for taking the time to make this tutorial.

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