Upload a document and add a watermark, then download the result as a PDF in seconds.
CONFIDENTIAL. Common choices are DRAFT, SAMPLE, INTERNAL USE ONLY, your client name, or a date. The watermark is drawn diagonally at -30° in dark red Helvetica Bold so it stays readable when printed in greyscale.A watermark is the lightest-weight way to mark a PDF as not-for-redistribution. Unlike PDF password encryption, which blocks access entirely, a watermark keeps the document readable while making unauthorised use visually obvious. It's discouragement, not enforcement — but for most internal-review, draft-circulation, and proof-of-ownership use cases that's exactly the right tool.
DRAFT or v1 — DO NOT CITE across every page prevents a colleague from accidentally forwarding a working copy to a client. Studios use the same trick on storyboards and architecture firms on early floor plans.CONFIDENTIAL — [Client Name] watermark on every page of a deliverable makes the chain of custody clear if the document leaks. Pair it with a password and you've covered access control and attribution at once.SUPERSEDED — see v3.2 across an outdated policy or spec so a stale copy fished out of someone's downloads folder still flags itself.EXHIBIT A or SUBMISSION COPY — DO NOT EDIT watermarks identify documents at a glance when stacks of similar-looking PDFs pile up in a case file or grading queue.| Approach | Stops viewing | Stops copying | Removable | What it's good for |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Text watermark (this tool) | No | No | Yes — by editor or rasteriser | Drafts, ownership marks, deterrence |
| Password / AES encryption | Yes — needs password | Partly (printing/copy restrictions can be set) | Yes — if password is known or cracked | Restricting who can open the file |
| Redaction (black-bar removal) | N/A — removes content | N/A | No — content is destroyed | Hiding PII before distribution |
| Flattening (no form/layer edits) | No | No | Removes edit affordances | Locking signed contracts and filled forms |
| DRM / rights management | Optional | Yes — viewer enforces rules | Practically no (without key) | Paid distribution, regulated industries |
A watermark is the right answer when you want the reader to see the document but be reminded of its status. If you want to stop access, encrypt. If you want to stop a specific section being read, redact. Many real workflows combine the three.
| Property | Text watermark (this tool) | Image / logo watermark |
|---|---|---|
| Setup time | Type a string, drag two sliders | Design a PNG, set scale and tile, align |
| File size impact | Negligible — a few hundred bytes per page | Each page embeds the image; can add MB on large docs |
| Looks crisp at any zoom | Yes — text is a vector glyph | Only if PNG is high-DPI; otherwise blurs on zoom |
| Print-friendly in greyscale | Yes — dark red prints as visible grey | Depends on logo contrast |
| Searchability of underlying text | Preserved — text is added as a separate content stream | Preserved |
| OCR layer of the original | Preserved | Preserved |
| Use case | DRAFT / CONFIDENTIAL / SAMPLE labels | Brand logo, signature stamp, custom mark |
xconvert's tool is text-only by design — for a logo watermark, exporting the logo to PNG and using a layered editor like LibreOffice Draw or Adobe Acrobat is a better fit.
Yes. The tool walks every page in the PDF and draws the same diagonal label at the same opacity and size. There is no per-page selector — if you need the watermark only on a subset, extract those pages first, watermark the extract, then merge the watermarked range back in with the un-watermarked pages.
Not directly in this tool. The workaround is the split-pdf and merge-pdf pair: split the document into the range you want to mark and the range you want to leave alone, watermark the marked range here, then merge the two PDFs back together. It takes three steps but produces a single output PDF with a watermark on exactly the pages you chose.
Yes — any text-overlay watermark, including this one, lives in a regular content stream that an editor like Adobe Acrobat, Foxit, or PDFsam can delete. Cleanly removing it usually requires the editor to either rasterise the page (which destroys the searchable text layer) or detect and strip the specific drawText operators. If you need a tamper-evident watermark, the right tool is DRM or AES encryption — not a visible overlay. Watermarks deter casual misuse; they don't enforce it.
Yes. The watermark is drawn as a separate text object on top of the original page content using pdf-lib — your underlying text layer is untouched, so Ctrl-F, screen readers, and any existing OCR layer keep working. Selecting body text in the output skips the watermark glyphs. This is in contrast to "removing" a watermark from a finished PDF, which usually rasterises the page and breaks search.
Helvetica Bold, dark red (RGB 178, 0, 0), drawn diagonally at -30° and centred horizontally and vertically on each page. These defaults are tuned for the common DRAFT / CONFIDENTIAL use case: greyscale-safe, screenshot-resistant, and readable without obscuring body text at the default 0.30 opacity. Font family and colour aren't user-configurable in this version — you control text, size, and opacity.
There is no hard cap set by xconvert. Files are uploaded over an encrypted connection, processed on xconvert's servers, and deleted automatically after a few hours. PDFs in the hundreds of MB range work; thousand-page documents above ~1 GB may stall during the page-thumbnail render rather than the watermarking step. If you hit issues with a very large file, compress the PDF first or split it into chunks with split-pdf, watermark each chunk, and merge.
Yes — files are uploaded over an encrypted connection, processed on xconvert's servers, and deleted automatically after a few hours. There is no permanent storage, no public gallery, and no account required. For documents where you need zero-upload handling, a desktop tool such as Adobe Acrobat or LibreOffice can apply watermarks entirely offline.
The current single-page workflow handles one PDF at a time. For a small batch the practical workflow is to keep the page open, run a PDF through, save it, then drop the next one in — the tool resets in under a second. For a recurring batch with the same watermark, scripting with the pdf-lib library directly (Node or browser) is the cleaner option than 50 manual passes.
Watermarking adds visible content on top of every page. Flattening merges form fields, annotations, and layer content into the base page so they can't be edited — it doesn't add anything new. The two are complementary: watermark a contract draft as DRAFT, then once it's signed, flatten the final to lock the signatures and annotations in place. xconvert handles watermarking here; flattening is best done in a desktop editor such as Adobe Acrobat or Foxit.