Watermark PDF

Mark a PDF as a draft, confidential or your own

Watermark PDF stamps text, such as DRAFT or CONFIDENTIAL, or an image, such as your logo, onto the pages of a PDF. You choose the size, colour, angle and transparency, whether the mark appears once in the centre or repeats across the page, and which pages get it.

The watermark is drawn over each page as a see-through layer, so the content underneath stays readable and the page’s text, links, form fields and bookmarks are kept. Everything runs in your browser; the PDF isn’t uploaded.

How to add a watermark to a PDF

1. Drop one PDF on the upload area, or click it to choose a file.
2. For a text watermark, keep the Text tab, type up to 100 characters, and set the font size, colour and angle — horizontal, diagonal up, diagonal down or vertical.
3. For a logo, switch to the Image tab, choose a PNG or JPG file and set its width as a percentage of the page width.
4. Set the opacity (10–100 %), choose Once, in the centre or Tiled across the page, and pick All pages or a list of pages such as 1, 3-5.
5. Click Add watermark. The marked copy downloads with -watermarked added to its name, so offer.pdf becomes offer-watermarked.pdf.

What the watermark looks like in the file

• Upright where you look: the mark is centred in the visible area of each page, and pages that are rotated or cropped get it the right way up as a viewer shows them.
• On top of the content: it’s drawn over text and images, with your opacity, so lower values keep the page easier to read.
• Text stays text: a text watermark is real text in Helvetica Bold, so it can turn up when someone searches or copies from the page.
• One image, many pages: an image is stored once and reused on every page, so a logo adds little to the file size.
• Other pages untouched: pages you leave out of the list aren’t changed at all.

Common reasons to watermark a PDF

• Drafts: label versions under review so nobody mistakes them for the final copy.
• Confidential papers: make it clear a document isn’t meant to be passed on.
• Branding: add a faint logo to proposals, price lists or portfolios.

Tips for a readable watermark

• Opacity around 20–35 % keeps the page readable; raise it for light colours or small text.
• If a long phrase runs off the page, the tool says so — lower the font size or use the diagonal angle, which gives the text more room.
• For photos rather than PDFs, use Image Watermark. To number pages as well, run the result through Add Page Numbers to PDF.

Watermark limits: characters, image formats and removal

Which characters text watermarks support

Text is set in a font every PDF reader has built in. That font covers English and other Western European languages — letters with accents, digits and common symbols such as €, © and dashes — but not Chinese, Japanese, Korean, Cyrillic, Greek, Arabic or emoji.

If the text contains characters it can’t show, the tool names them before anything is saved. For other scripts, make an image of the text and use the Image tab.

Image formats

PNG and JPG files are embedded as they are, and PNG transparency is kept, so a logo on a transparent background looks clean. Other formats your browser can open, such as WebP or GIF, and photos that are stored sideways with a rotation tag, are redrawn as PNG first; very large images are scaled down to 4,000 pixels on the longest side when that happens.

A watermark is not protection

A watermark is a visible mark. Anyone with a PDF editor can select and delete it, so it signals ownership or status rather than preventing copying. Keep your unmarked original separately.

Watermark PDF: common questions