Add Watermark to PDF

Text or image

Text watermarks suit status marking - DRAFT, CONFIDENTIAL, SAMPLE, a matter number. They are sharp at any zoom because they are drawn as vector text.

Image watermarks suit branding. A PNG with a transparent background gives by far the cleanest result; a JPEG brings a solid rectangle with it, which looks heavy on the page.

Settings that make it readable but not intrusive

Around 30-50% opacity is the range where a watermark reads clearly without obscuring the text beneath it. Below 20% it becomes easy to miss; above 60% the document becomes tiring to read.

A 45 degree diagonal across the centre is the hardest to crop out and the most recognisable as a watermark. Tiled placement repeats the mark across the page, which is harder to remove but busier to read.

Watermarking several files at once

Add multiple PDFs and the same watermark is applied to all of them, returned together as a ZIP with each file kept separate. This is the practical way to mark a set of documents before circulating them for review.

It cannot be cleanly removed later

A watermark added here is drawn into the page content, so it cannot be lifted back out - only covered. Keep your original if you will need a clean copy, because there is no way back from the watermarked version.