Initializing secure environment…
Initializing secure environment…
Stamp a PDF with a text or image watermark and control how prominent it is. Opacity, rotation, tiling, position, page range and colour are all yours to set, so a DRAFT across a proposal and a small CONFIDENTIAL in the footer are both one control away from each other. Applied to every page or a selected range. And to be clear about the other direction: this site never adds a watermark of its own to anything you produce, in any tool, ever.
To add a watermark to a PDF free, add the file, type your text or choose an image, set the opacity, rotation and position, and apply it to all pages or a range. No upload, and ihatepdf never watermarks your output itself.
A diagonal DRAFT at 20% across every page is the convention. Diagonal means it cannot be cropped out by trimming a margin, and 20% keeps body text readable. Add the date alongside it, because a draft without a date is ambiguous within a week.
Put CONFIDENTIAL in the footer rather than across the middle, at 8 to 10% opacity. It survives a photocopy, it does not fight with the text, and it is still visible on a printout. Diagonal is for drafts; the corner is for standing notices.
Export the logo as a transparent PNG before uploading it. A JPG has no transparency, so the white background becomes an opaque block that hides the page under it. If your logo only exists as a JPG, remove the white with the same background remover the signature tool uses.
A watermark communicates; it does not protect. Anyone with a PDF editor can delete it. If the requirement is that the recipient cannot open or print the file, that is encryption, and Encrypt PDF does it with AES-256. Use a watermark to label, and a password to control.
No, and there is no version of this site that does. No output from any tool here carries a watermark, visible or invisible, at any tier — because there is no paid tier. The watermark in your file is one you added yourself.
A watermark drawn into the page content can be edited out by anyone with a PDF editor, so it is a marking tool, not a security control. If you need to prevent removal, encrypt the file with Encrypt PDF instead — a password is a real control and a watermark is not.
15 to 30% for a DRAFT that must be clearly visible but readable through. 5 to 10% for a discreet confidentiality mark in the corner. Above about 40% you are obscuring the document, which is usually a sign you want a smaller mark rather than a stronger one.
Yes. Specify a page range, which is what you want for a document where only the body should be marked and the cover should stay clean.
Yes, because it is drawn into the page content rather than added as a viewer overlay. It appears in print, in exports, and in any other software that opens the file.
Yes — any image you have on your device. A transparent PNG works best, since a white background in the image will sit on top of the page as a white block unless the transparency is in the file.
Yes. The watermark is drawn on top of whatever the page contains, so a scan gets one too. On a dark scan, lighten the watermark or use white, because a black mark on a dark image disappears.
Yes. No account, no watermark of our own, no upload, and no limit on how many documents you mark.
More edit & annotate — all free, no upload.