default-Banner at all Uploads

Hey @1fallenangel1 ,

Thanks for reaching out!

The semitransparent overlay at the bottom of the image that says “default” is the default way NextGEN Gallery displays image descriptions. This behavior hasn’t changed since version 3.x, so it’s not a recent update. If you’ve only just started noticing it, this is likely because you upgraded from a much older version of the plugin.

There isn’t a built-in option to turn this off, but you have two ways to fix it:

1. Delete the image descriptions, or
2. Add this custom CSS to hide the overlay site-wide

To add the CSS, go to Admin > Appearance > Customize > Additional CSS and paste this code:

.sl-wrapper .sl-image .sl-caption {
  display: none !important;
}

I hope this helps! Let me know if you run into any issues.

Thanks,
Mihai

Hi @1fallenangel1,

Just to clarify: the overlay item you hid with CSS isn’t related to watermarking.

If watermarks aren’t showing up for you, let me know how you’re applying them to your gallery images. Are you doing this automatically or manually?

For automatic watermarking:
Go to Imagely → Settings → Watermarking and make sure “Apply watermark automatically during upload” is checked. This applies watermarks to new images as you upload them.

For manual watermarking:

1. Go to Imagely → Galleries and open a gallery
2. Click the Images tab and select All Images
3. From Bulk Actions, choose Set Watermark
4. Wait for the process to finish

If you’re applying watermarks manually, clear your site and browser cache afterward. Otherwise, you might still see the old, unwatermarked images due to caching.

One more thing to note: watermarking only applies to full-size lightbox images. It won’t show up on thumbnails unless you regenerate them after watermarking the full-size images.

I hope this helps! Let me know if you have any questions.

Thanks,
Mihai

Hi @1fallenangel1 ,

Thanks for walking me through how you apply watermarks. That helps a lot.

The green circles behaving differently is expected. The new Imagely interface shows progress for the whole batch instead of clearing each photo one at a time. The watermarking step behind it is the same one NextGEN Gallery has always used, and we haven’t had other reports of it failing in the latest version. So something specific to your site is probably stopping the watermark from being written.

Could you check a few things for me?

1. Go to “Imagely > Settings > Watermarking” and look at the “Watermark preview”. If the preview doesn’t show your watermark, the problem is in the settings. With “Image watermark”, the “Watermark Image Path” has to point to a file that really exists on your server.
2. Open one gallery, select a single image, and run “Set Watermark” on just that one. When it finishes, tell me the exact message you see.
3. Clear your site cache (and any CDN cache), then open the full-size image in a private browser window. Otherwise you may still be seeing the old copy without the watermark.

If the preview looks right and the watermark still doesn’t show up, it may be a conflict with another plugin. The safest way to test this is on a staging copy of your site. Deactivate all plugins except NextGEN Gallery, switch to a default theme like Twenty Twenty-Five, and try “Set Watermark” again. If it works there, turn your plugins back on one at a time until it stops working, and let me know which one it was.

Thanks,
Mihai