Adding a Watermark to a PDF

Watermarks are text or image elements that typically appear behind existing content, and they are usually semitransparent. They’re designed to be visible to the user without being overly intrusive.

For example, you might want to include a “Confidential” watermark on sensitive content pages, or a “Draft” watermark to ensure that people know that this is not the final version of a document.

You can also add watermarks for branding and document protection, with elements such as your company logo and copyright information.

When you add a watermark to your PDF using Adobe Acrobat, it becomes a permanent fixture within the pages of a document. This is where they differ from stamps, which are essentially comments that readers can open to view, edit and interact with.

How to Add a Watermark to a PDF

To add a Watermark to your PDF, do the following:

1. Start by opening the PDF document to contain the watermark.
2. Select Edit.
3. Under Add Content, select More, then select Watermark > Add.

The Add Watermark dialog box has options for:

• Choosing between Text and Image watermarks
• Formatting your watermark
• Adjusting the appearance, such as rotation and opacity
• Choosing the watermark position
• Page range options for adding the watermark to all pages or a selection of pages.

In my screenshot, I’ve added a Draft watermark, (I made it 100% for the example, but usually this will be set to 50%).

I also opted to adjust the rotation to 45% and dropped the opacity to 30%.

Finally, I chose “Appear behind page” to make the text a little easier to read.

If you want, you can use the Page Range Options link at the top right to specify the exact page range for the watermark, but I wanted it on every page.

If you feel adventurous, you can even use the button at the bottom right to set up watermarks for multiple documents at once. This can be a great time saver, but I’ll leave that for another article!

Conclusion

Adding a watermark to your PDF is a great way to differentiate your document content and ensure that your readers understand the document purpose. Try it out for yourself.