The quick answer: stamp it before you send it
The contract draft went out without DRAFT on it, and now two versions are floating around with nothing to tell them apart. Open Watermark PDF, press a suggestion such as DRAFT and add the mark to every page in about a minute. Do it before the file leaves your hands, not after.
- Choose the PDF or drop it on the page. The preview shows its first page.
- Type your text or press a suggestion: CONFIDENTIAL, DRAFT, COPY, SAMPLE or DO NOT COPY. For a logo, switch to Image and choose a PNG, JPG or WebP file.
- Set the size, opacity, rotation and position, or turn on Repeat across the page. Look at a turned or differently sized page in the preview too.
- Choose the pages (all, odd, even or a range you type), press Add watermark and download. A few pages of the new file are drawn and compared with the original to check the mark can be seen.
The work happens on your device, so a contract is never uploaded. One thing to know up front: a watermark is a visible label, not protection.
Text or logo
| Compare | Text | Logo |
|---|---|---|
| How it is stored | Western European Latin letters as real text in Helvetica, Times or Courier. Other letters and scripts are drawn with your device's fonts as a picture | A picture, stored once however many pages use it |
| Format and size | Sharp at any zoom, a few hundred bytes a page | PNG, JPG or WebP. A PNG about 1000 to 2000 pixels wide looks sharp when it spans most of a page |
| Watch out for | Greek, Cyrillic, Arabic, Hebrew and Asian text become a picture and cannot be selected | A PNG keeps its see-through background, while a JPG logo shows as a box |
Real text can be selected, so the word CONFIDENTIAL can show up when someone copies the page's text. Text drawn as a picture cannot. The page tells you which of the two it used.
Opacity, angle and size
| Goal | Settings |
|---|---|
| A DRAFT stamp across the page | Text at 45 degrees, the classic diagonal, large, with a low opacity so the page stays readable |
| A small label | Text at 0 degrees in a corner or at the top, small, with a margin |
| A company logo | Image in a corner or behind the content, at moderate opacity |
| A mark that is hard to crop out | Repeat across the page, with the spacing and the angle you want |
Size is a share of the page width, so pages of different sizes get the same look. Opacity runs from 5 to 100 percent, and at 100 the mark covers what is under it. Rotation turns the mark counter clockwise from -180 to 180 degrees. The mark is placed on the page as a reader sees it, so a page stored sideways still gets it upright. The tool starts a text mark as a bold gray diagonal at 30 percent opacity, and red is the classic color for DRAFT.
Repeat across the page fills the page with copies in staggered rows that follow the rotation. The spacing is a share of the mark's own size, and a page can hold up to 400 copies.
Above the page or behind it
A mark placed above is added after the page's own drawing, so it always shows. A mark placed behind is added before it, so the page covers it. That keeps text easy to read, but behind works only where the page is see-through. A page from a word processor usually has no background, so the mark shows between the letters. A scan, a slide with a colored background or a page with a white rectangle over the whole sheet paints over it completely.
ClipLime checks which pages do that. With Show it on pages that cover it switched on, which it is by default, those pages get the mark above their content instead, and the result says how many were treated that way. For DRAFT, choose above. For a letterhead logo, behind is fine.
The right order: watermark after merging, compress last
Every step writes the file again, so the order matters.
| Step | Why here |
|---|---|
| 1. Turn and delete pages | Fix each file first: rotate sideways scans and delete pages you do not need |
| 2. Merge, then reorder | Merge PDF first, so one pass marks every page of the packet in the same way, then rearrange any pages in the wrong place |
| 3. Add the watermark | Pages are final, so the mark lands on all of them |
| 4. Add page numbers | Numbers go last, once the pages stop moving |
| 5. Compress | Reduce PDF size last, because it is the step you check against an email limit |
If different documents need different words, such as COPY on one and DRAFT on another, mark each file first and merge afterwards. A watermark keeps the document information as it was, while merging leaves out the title and author of the originals, so open the final file in PDF Metadata to see what it says about you. What your PDF reveals about you explains why that matters.
A digital signature does not survive these steps: the watermark stops it verifying, and merging builds a new file. Sign the final version last.
Read it on screen and on paper
On screen, open the new file in a viewer you do not usually use and look at the first page, a middle page, a landscape page and a scanned page if you have one. On paper, print one page before you print fifty, in the mode you will really use, color or black and white, and hold it at arm's length. If the mark has vanished, raise the opacity. If it fights with the text, lower it or make it smaller.
The mark itself adds almost nothing. One mark adds roughly 250 bytes a page, so a 40 page contract gains about 10,000 bytes from the marks. Saving the file again repacks it, so the total can move a little either way, and the result card shows the size before and after. A tiled page with 50 copies adds about 800 bytes, and a logo is stored once.
What a watermark can and cannot do
A visible watermark tells readers what a file is: a draft, a copy, confidential. It sits in the page like any other drawing, and a person with a PDF editor can select and delete it, or cover it. This tool does not encrypt the file, does not stop copying or editing, and does not turn the pages into pictures. The PDF is not protected by it.
A harder mark means flattening the pages into pictures, which this tool does not do. You could build such a copy yourself: convert the pages to JPG, then save the pictures as a PDF. The text then stops being text, so it is no longer searchable, and the file is usually larger. A picture can still be edited by someone determined.
What goes wrong, and the fix
- The mark is missing on some pages. Check that they are among the pages you chose. If the mark is behind the page, they may paint their own background. Leave the option to show it on those pages switched on, or choose above the page.
- The logo has a box around it. It is probably a JPG, or a PNG with a solid background. Use a PNG with a see-through background.
- The text looks a little different from the preview. The preview uses a look-alike font from your device, and each viewer draws the standard fonts in its own way. Letters drawn as a picture use the fonts of the device that made the file, so another device may give another look.
- The tool asks for a bigger mark. A tiled page would need more than 400 copies. Make the mark bigger or the gaps wider.
- The file is refused. A PDF with a password or permission settings is encrypted, and ClipLime cannot decrypt files. If you are allowed to, export an unprotected copy and mark that.
- The signature no longer verifies. Any edit breaks it. Keep the signed original and mark a copy.