What a watermark is good for
A watermark is text stamped across your pages, usually big and see-through so you can still read what's underneath. People use them to:
- Mark a document as DRAFT so nobody treats it as final
- Label something CONFIDENTIAL or INTERNAL ONLY
- Put SAMPLE or PREVIEW on work you're showing a client before they pay
- Add your name or business to designs, photos or printables you share
- Write "For rental application only" across a copy of your ID, which is a smart habit when you have to send ID to strangers
Your styling options
Text and size
Type whatever you want. Short works best. One or two words look bold and clean, while a whole sentence gets small fast. Make it bigger with the size slider.
Color
Gray is classic and easy to read through. Red says "pay attention." Pick any color you like.
Opacity
This is how see-through the stamp is. Around 15 to 30 percent is the sweet spot: obvious, but the page underneath is still easy to read. Go higher if you really want it to get in the way, say on a proof you don't want anybody using for free.
Angle
Diagonal, corner to corner, is the traditional look and hardest to crop out. Flat (horizontal) looks tidier for labels like "INTERNAL."
Single or tiled
Single puts one big stamp in the center of each page. Tiled repeats it in a grid across the whole page, which is much harder to get rid of by cropping or covering. Use tiled for anything you really don't want reused.
How hard is it to remove?
Let's be real. A watermark added to a PDF is a layer of text on top of the page. It's a solid deterrent and it makes your intentions clear, but somebody determined with the right editing software could take it off. If you really need to lock it in, run the watermarked file through Compress PDF on Medium. That flattens every page into an image, watermark included, so it can't be peeled off as a separate layer. The trade-off is that text won't be selectable anymore.
Watermark wording that works
Keep it short and obvious. Some that people use a lot:
- DRAFT or DRAFT - NOT FINAL
- CONFIDENTIAL
- SAMPLE or PROOF for client previews
- COPY for duplicates of originals
- For [purpose] only - [date] on copies of IDs and documents you send to third parties
That last one is worth a habit. If a copy of your ID ever leaks, a watermark saying exactly who it was for and when makes it a lot less useful to anyone else.
Tips
- Preview first. You'll see a preview of the first page as you change settings.
- Light pages, darker stamp. Dark pages, lighter stamp. Gray at low opacity disappears on a dark background.
- Combine with page numbers. For a polished draft, add a DRAFT watermark and then page numbers.
- Keep the original. The watermarked version is a new file. Hang on to the clean one for the final send.
Private, nothing uploaded
The watermark is drawn onto the pages in your browser. Your PDF never gets uploaded, which is kind of the point when the word you're stamping is "CONFIDENTIAL."
Signing instead of stamping? Head to Sign PDF.