What makes a logo work as a mark
A logo that looks right on a letterhead often disappears on a photograph. A mark has to survive three things a letterhead never asks of it: being drawn at a tenth of the frame, being drawn at thirty or forty per cent opacity, and sitting on whatever the photograph happens to have in that corner — sky on one file, a dark jacket on the next. The logos that survive are simple: one colour, a silhouette you can recognise at the size of a thumbnail, and a see-through background so the photograph shows around the shape rather than inside a box.
Most of that can be done here rather than in a design program. Tinting the logo to one colour keeps its shape and transparency and paints it white or black, which is how a coloured logo usually becomes a watermark. The white and black versions are one press each, and either can be set to auto ink on the text and signature marks when a folder runs light and dark.
Transparent PNG, SVG or flat JPG
| Transparent PNG | The usual answer. The see-through areas stay see-through and the logo is drawn from its own pixels at the size each picture needs. |
|---|---|
| SVG | Best when you have it. Read here, cleaned of anything that is not drawing, and drawn at output size — sharp on any photograph. |
| Flat JPG | Works once its background is knocked out. Without that it lands as a rectangle, and the studio says so before you save anything. |
| WebP, GIF, BMP | Open as raster logos, like a PNG. An animated GIF uses its first frame. |
Knocking out a white box, and when it fails
When a logo has no see-through areas the studio proposes a key colour from the outermost two per cent of the file — the border ring — and tells you how much of that ring the colour covers. Switch the knockout on and every pixel within the tolerance of the key becomes transparent; pixels just outside it fade over a soft edge, so anti-aliased curves do not come out jagged; and small islands left behind are dropped. The before-and-after pair on a checkerboard shows exactly what will be drawn. Undo puts it back.
- It keys one colour. A logo on a gradient, on paper with a shadow across it, or photographed at an angle keeps part of its background.
- White inside the logo goes too, if it is the same white as the background. Raise the tolerance less, or use the threshold for a one-colour mark instead.
- It does not find a logo inside a photograph. That is a cut-out, and this site does not make cut-outs.
How big a logo should be on a 6,000 px photo
Size is a share of each picture’s own width — 18 per cent here to start — so one setting lands the same on a 1,200-pixel web copy and a 6,000-pixel original. On the large file that 18 per cent is 1,080 pixels, which is the width your logo file needs to have for it to be drawn at its own resolution or smaller. A 600-pixel PNG on that photograph is enlarged by eighty per cent and softens visibly; the panel names both widths when that happens. For a whole folder, use the batch route — the logo is drawn from its own file on every picture, and a logo saved with a recipe comes back with it next time.
If your logo is a stamp or a signature on paper rather than artwork, turn the picture into a mark first: the threshold makes it one colour with a transparent background.
Logo questions
My logo has a white box around it — can that be removed?
Usually, yes. Switch on “Make the background colour transparent” under Knock out the background: the key colour is read from the logo's own border (most often white), every pixel within the tolerance of it becomes transparent, and the edge is softened by up to three pixels so it does not look cut with scissors. It is a colour key, not a model, so it works on artwork printed on one flat colour. A logo photographed on a desk, or sitting on a gradient, will keep some of its background — the panel says so when the border is not one flat colour.
What size should my logo file be?
At least as wide as it will be drawn on your largest photo. A logo at 20 % of a 6,000-pixel-wide original is drawn 1,200 pixels wide, so a 300-pixel PNG will be enlarged four times and look soft. The studio works this out for the picture you have open and warns you with both numbers when the file is too small. An SVG has no such limit: it is drawn at whatever size each picture needs.
Can I use an SVG?
Yes. The SVG is read on this device and cleaned before it is drawn — scripts, embedded web content, event handlers and links to anything outside the file are removed — and then rendered at the size each export needs, so a 6,000-pixel file never carries an enlarged bitmap. An SVG that relied on any of the removed parts to look right is not a logo file, and it will look different here.
Why does my logo look blurry?
Because it has fewer pixels than the space it is being drawn into. Open a larger export of the same logo, or the SVG. If you only have a small file, keep the logo smaller on the picture — the warning under the logo panel gives the width at which it stops being enlarged.