How to watermark a PDF
Mark a document as a draft or brand it with a logo, without making it unreadable.
Watermarks do two jobs. They label a document's status — DRAFT, CONFIDENTIAL, NOT FOR DISTRIBUTION — and they brand it. Both depend on being visible enough to register and faint enough to read through.
You can stamp text or an image, and the settings differ for each.
The steps
- Upload the PDF.
- Choose a text watermark, or switch to image mode and upload a PNG or JPEG.
- Set opacity, and either rotation, size and colour for text, or width and position for an image.
- Run the tool and download the branded document.
Getting the balance right
The default opacity is deliberately low, because the most common mistake is a watermark that makes the document hard to read. Raise it gradually and check a text-heavy page rather than the cover.
For text, the diagonal rotation is conventional for a reason: it crosses the text block without aligning to any line, which keeps both readable. A mid-grey works better than black at any opacity.
Image watermarks
A PNG with transparency sits over text far better than a rectangular JPEG, which brings its own background with it. Width is set as a fraction of the page, so the same settings behave consistently across mixed page sizes.
A watermark is a label, not a lock
It is drawn into the page content, so it is not a checkbox someone can switch off — but it is not security either. A determined recipient can work around it. If the document genuinely must not be copied or printed, set permissions; if it must not be read at all, encrypt it.
