This tutorial will show you how to make an action in Photoshop that will add your information and a copyright within a file's properties. This is useful so that your name will be "hidden" within your photo or artwork. It is recommended that you do this for all images you post online to help protect your work.

Note: The screenshots in this tutorial were made using Photoshop CS3.

Creating an action

To create an action in Photoshop, you must have a file open.

In the Actions Panel, press the Create New Action button (inbetween new folder and the trash can):

Name your action and press the Record button:

Edit File Info

In the main Photoshop menu, Go to File, then select

File Info:

Fill in the information that you want to go into the proprties of the photo. I'd recommend filling in the Author (your name), a Description, and Copyright Notice. You may not want to put the Document Title in yet since this is an automatic action that you are creating for many files - you can do this to your files individually since it will differ from image to image. Also be sure to select Copyrighted in the Copyright Status dropdown.

When you are done entering your information, press OK:

You should see a © symbol in the title bar of your Photoshop file:

In the Actions Panel, press the Stop Recording button (to the left of the record button):

Using your action

You can now put your information and copyright on all of your images with just one click.

To use this on future images, when you have a file opened press the Play Selection button in the Actions Panel:

IMPORTANT:

Be sure to save your work using Save As... instead of Save for Web - otherwise your information will not be saved to the file.

To see your information, locate your file on your harddrive. Right click on the file and select Properties. In the file's properties, select the Details tabs. You should see your information in various places: