Add a watermark to a PDFlive preview, instant save

Drop the PDF on the upload card. The text box starts on CONFIDENTIAL, so if that is what you need, the job is already done: click Apply and the stamped copy downloads.

For anything else, type over it. DRAFT, SAMPLE, SPECIMEN, COPY, a client name, a date, or a case number all work the same way.

The opacity slider runs from 5 percent to 60 percent and starts at 18 percent, which is faint enough to read straight through and dark enough to notice.

Push it past 40 percent when the stamp has to be the first thing a reader sees, and pull it down towards 10 percent when the document underneath matters more than the mark on top.

The stamp starts tilted at 35 degrees, the usual diagonal. The rotation slider swings from 90 degrees one way to 90 degrees the other, so you can also lay the text flat or stand it up the side of the page. Size runs from 24 to 144 points, and there are five colors: gray, black, red, teal, and navy.

The panel on the right shows the text, angle, size, opacity, and color on a mock page with grey placeholder lines. It is there to get the look right, not to show your own content. What lands on your pages is the same stamp, centered, at the size you picked.

Every page gets the stamp, with no page-range picker. To mark part of a document, split out those pages, stamp the smaller file, and put the document back together.

After stamping a section on its own, merge it with the untouched pages in the right order. The result is one PDF where only the pages you chose carry the mark.

A faint DRAFT across the page saves the awkward conversation later, when someone treats an early version as final. The same trick works for SAMPLE on a template, SPECIMEN on a certificate, and NOT FOR DISTRIBUTION on an internal report.

The stamp is text drawn onto the page. It is visible, it prints, and it survives a forward or a re-download, which is exactly what it is for. It is not a lock. A determined person can crop the page, cover the mark, or rebuild the document without it.

If the point is to keep people out of the file, a password does that job. A watermark only tells honest readers what they are looking at.

A stamp sits on top of the page, so anything underneath is still there and still readable around the edges. To take words out of a document rather than label it, use the redaction tool, which rebuilds the page without them.

Scans work the same way. The pages are pictures, and the stamp is drawn on top of them, so a scanned contract or a photographed form takes the mark just like a text document does.

Image stamps are not part of this tool, which handles text only. To place a logo, open the document in the editor, drop the image where you want it, and repeat it on the pages that need it.

The stamp uses a standard bold font that covers the Latin alphabet, numbers, and common punctuation, including accented letters. Text in other scripts will not stamp. Long text at a large size can also run off the edges of the page, since the words are drawn at the size you picked rather than shrunk to fit.

The reliable answer is to keep the unstamped original and go back to it. Once the text is drawn into the page content it is part of the document, and pulling it back out cleanly is not something any tool can guarantee.

The tool is a web page and runs in a mobile browser. Pick the file from your device, set the sliders, tap Apply, and the stamped copy is saved to your downloads.