Today’s Question: Is it possible to mask out a logo in Lightroom similar to what you covered about this technique in Photoshop in a previous Ask Tim Grey email?
Tim’s Quick Answer: You can’t perform the masking work in Lightroom, but you can employ a masked logo as a watermark in Lightroom for a variety of sharing methods.
More Detail: In an Ask Tim Grey eNewsletter last week I discussed the use of a blend mode to automatically (and very effectively) mask a black logo on a white background (or vice versa). Lightroom does not have any such masking feature, and so you would need to perform the actual masking work in Photoshop.
In the context of preparing a logo to use as a watermark with transparency as part of that logo, you couldn’t actually use the blend mode option in Photoshop. You would instead need to use a layer mask, in order to create a logo file where the logo consists of opaque (or partially opaque) pixels, with completely transparent pixels in the non-logo areas.
From within Photoshop, after preparing this image with transparency, you could then create a PNG image with transparency to use as your watermark. To do so, choose File > Export > Quick Export as PNG from the menu in Photoshop. Save the resulting PNG file in a convenient location you’ll be able to access from Lightroom.
That PNG image can then be used as a graphic watermark with the various sharing options in Lightroom. For example, the watermark could be placed on an image you are printing from the Print module. After turning on the “Watermarking” checkbox you can click the associated popup and choose “Edit Watermarks” from the popup menu.
In the Watermark Editor dialog you could then choose the “Graphic” option from the “Watermark Style” setting, and click the Choose button to select the PNG file you created. Because this image includes transparency, only the logo itself would appear as the watermark on the image. You can then adjust the other settings (such as position and scale) for the watermark, and click the Save button to save this watermark for future use for sharing photos in Lightroom.