This particular instruction is for an outlined text as displayed in the sample for Bird-Stockphotos.com which is unobtrusive but also clearly visible on both light and dark images.
To get a watermark to work on light and dark images you either need a white on black watermark or a black on white.
- Create a new document, I create it at 1200 x 256 pixels which is much larger than necessary but which when scaled preserves quality.
- Create a new layer and name it ‘Text’
- Select the text tool and type your text, in this case ‘Bird-Stockphotos.com’
- Create a new layer and name it ‘Text Outline’
- With the ‘Text Outline’ layer selected, press and hold Ctrl key in Windows, Command key on Mac, and then click on the THUMBNAIL of the ‘Text’ layer which will create a selection based on the outline of that layer. Notice the marching ants? NB: The ‘Text’ layer is not selected, you are still working on the ‘Text Outline’ layer.
- Click Select > Modify > Expand, and make it 2 or 3 pixels
- Fill this expanded selection with whatever colour you want, a 20% grey in my case
- Now again with the ‘Text Outline’ layer selected, ctrl or cmd click the thumbnail in the ‘Text’ layer and then press the ‘Delete’ key, this removes the fill and only leaves an outline.
- Now give the text outline a drop shadow to make it stand out across all image colours
- Hide the ‘Text’ layer
- Save for Web and save in PNG