Adding custom watermark

Russell had stated that you could add your logo as a watermark to your Inspection template," if you know how ". Anybody know how to do this?

I would like to know how as well! Watching this

I think Russell mentioned that it involves CSS. I’m going to pick the brains of some programmers I know.

I have asked a couple of staffers here if they would write up a technical instruction. I am not sure if that will help us non nerdy people. But, I will try to get them to write it out and post here.

We can do it for you for $199 I think is what we charge. But, we certainly don’t mind if someone can figure it out themselves.

I thought I would post the INACHI Canada sample here. You can see the logo in the background.

https://www.homegauge.com/report/3695154/FullReportForUploadorPrintWithPictures.html

I certainly understand the need to make money for a business, but if you made this easy to do for the “layman”, it would be a very big marketing tool.

You can see the CMI logo in our sample report at my website. We also put the Nachi logos at different sections, it was a download from HG we inserted into the page code for the watermark.

True. It’s not difficult by design. It involves coding that the average user doesn’t understand. Me included. I agree, If there was a insert logo here…Voila! There are many buttons I want to do that with!

In HomeGauge 5 it is pretty easy to do with the following formats:

Narrative 3
Narrative 3b
Grid 3
Grid 3b

Step 1: Make your logo watermark file. A jpg, gif, or png would work. The InterNACHI watermark file is 481x480px in size, to give you a rough idea. You will want to copy this file into the images folder that’s inside of the folder for the print format you are using. (You will see the InterNACHI watermark logo in the folder.)

The files for the formats are stored in these locations:

Narrative 3 = \Documents\HomeGauge\PrintFormats\Format8
Narrative 3b = \Documents\HomeGauge\PrintFormats\Format8b
Grid 3 = \Documents\HomeGauge\PrintFormats\Format7
Grid 3b = \Documents\HomeGauge\PrintFormats\Format7b

Step 2: Edit your css file. The easiest thing to do would be to make a copy of the InterNACHI-Blue file and rename it to something else (avoid spaces and special characters). Next, open your new css file in your text editor of choice (notepad, notepad++, etc.). Replace the text inachi-watermark.jpg with your new file name that you copied into the images folder. It should be in there in 3 places. Save the file.

Step 3: Select this new style from your printing options.

That’s it!

These changes will give you a theme based on the colors from the HomeGauge InterNACHI theme, but with your logo (blue for the Narrative versions, blue and orange for the Grid versions). If you want to take it further, you can make additional changes to the css file besides just changing the logo name – it’s not too hard if you have some basic html/css knowledge, or know someone who does.

Thanks Russell. I’m going to play with it today. Maybe I’ll mess with the ASHI template. :smiling_face:

That looks good Scot. I like the way you added the Nachi logos to each relevant section. But I want to watermark each page with my logo, like you did with the CMI logo. I want to brand the report to me, not another party or organization.

Hmm…not having any luck. Resized image and added it to the images folder in >printformats>print8
Then I saved a copy of the internachi css file, but it saves as a Txt file, not a css file. I edited and saved the Txt file. I’m thinking I need to create a new CSS file with the edited Txt file.

Okay, I’m starting to get it. When you save the Txt file, you need to name it like this “newfile.css” adding the .css to the name makes it a css file. So now I can see this in the style options. When I click on it for the “style” it shows up in the style preview, but doesn’t show up in the print preview, and doesn’t print.

Hmmm…just tried something. Opened the internachi template. The internachi watermark doesn’t print either.

Okay. Figured it all out. The watermark gets uploaded to the cloud report and is seen there. Cool. Now I have my custom watermark. Thanks Russell. Easy Peasy.

Awesome!I am glad it worked for you. Now you are part of our support team!

Got this to work - Spent the last couple hours getting everything right, and decided I don’t think I like the whole image in the background look.

I used a photo editor to create a grayscale version of my logo, and then used exposure to lighten it. Makes it more subtle. And I used the same file name and replaced the original image when I saved the file. That way I didn’t have to edit the CSS again.

Yeah, that’s what I did. Just think that background image makes for a busy report. Just my opinion.

I did enjoy the challenge of doing it though.

Thanks to Russell for the help!!

If you want you can send me your original logo and we can set the transparency our way to see if there is any difference in the look?

Russell@homegauge.com