"Fit to image" scaling for image watermarks (full-frame logo overlays)

Hello Capture One team,

I'm a professional photographer using Capture One on Windows. I'd like to suggest an improvement to the Image watermark option in export recipes.

THE PROBLEM

I export event coverage with a full-frame PNG overlay: a transparent canvas with the client's logos and social handles along the bottom edge. The overlay file is 6720x4480, the same as the camera's native resolution. My recipe exports at 3000x2000.

With Scale set to 100, the exported images came out with no logos at all. The Events log showed repeated messages: "Watermark size exceeded limit. Scaling a watermark exceeded the size limit. The size has been clipped."

Scale appears to be measured against the watermark file's own pixel size, not the output image. So the oversized overlay was centered and cropped, and only its transparent middle stayed inside the frame. It worked only after I set Scale to about 45 (3000 / 6720), or resized the PNG to exactly 3000x2000.

That means every recipe with a different output size needs its own Scale value or its own watermark file, and nothing in the interface explains why the watermark disappears.

SUGGESTED IMPROVEMENTS

1. Fit / Fill modes: a "Size mode" option: Fit to image, Fill image, Fixed scale (current behavior). Fit would scale the overlay to the exported image automatically, whatever the recipe's output size.

2. 2. Scale relative to the output: define Scale as a percentage of the exported image's width, height or long edge, so one watermark gives consistent results across all recipes.

3. 3. Anchor and margin: a 9-point anchor (e.g. bottom-center) plus a margin as a percentage, instead of only Horizontal/Vertical offsets.

4. 4. Orientation handling: keep the watermark correctly sized and placed on both portrait and landscape images.

5. 5. Visible warning: show a clear warning in the Export dialog when a watermark is clipped or falls outside the frame, instead of only logging it in Events.

Related ideas: "Make Watermark scale with crop" and "Watermark to be sized by percentage".

Most photo and design tools already scale overlays relative to the output, so photographers expect this. It would make branded and client-logo exports much faster and more reliable.

Thank you for considering this.

Best regards,

Rayan Al-Bazie

Rayan Photography - rayanphoto.com