How to add a watermark to a PDF or a photo

To add a watermark, use Add Watermark to PDF for documents or Add Watermark to Image for photos: type your text, choose where it goes and how visible it is, then download the marked copy. Both run in your browser, and your files are not uploaded.

Watermark a PDF

1. Open Add Watermark to PDF and drop your document.
2. Type the Watermark text — for example CONFIDENTIAL, DRAFT, COPY or the recipient's name.
3. Under Layout, choose Once, centred or Repeated across the page.
4. Set the Font size, Angle, Colour and Opacity.
5. Click Add watermark and download the result.

The text is stamped on every page. It is drawn as real text on top of the content, so it stays sharp at any zoom and barely changes the file size. The existing pages are not re-compressed.

Watermark photos

1. Open Add Watermark to Image and drop one photo or several at once.
2. Type the Watermark text, such as your name or website.
3. Pick a Position: one of the four corners, Centre, or Repeated diagonally.
4. Adjust Opacity, Text size and Text colour.
5. Click Add watermark and download.

The text size is relative to each image, so the watermark looks consistent across photos of different sizes. A soft shadow keeps it readable on both light and dark areas.

Choosing the right settings

• For a document status (DRAFT, CONFIDENTIAL): one large diagonal line in the centre, light grey, around 20–30% opacity. It is visible at a glance without hiding the text.
• To discourage reuse of a document: repeat the text across the page, ideally with the recipient's name or the date ("Copy for J. Smith – 21 September 2026"). If the file leaks, you know which copy it was.
• For photos you share publicly: a small mark in a corner is discreet but easy to crop out. Repeated diagonally is much harder to remove, at the cost of being more visible — the usual choice for photographers' proofs.
• Check readability. Open the result and read a page or zoom in on a photo. A watermark that makes the content unreadable defeats the purpose.

What a watermark does — and doesn't do

A visible watermark deters misuse. It shows the status of a document, reminds people it isn't theirs to reuse, and makes a leaked copy traceable.

It is not a lock. Someone determined and equipped with editing software can remove or cover a text watermark on a PDF, and retouch or crop one out of a photo. Repeated marks take more effort to remove than a single corner mark, but none is impossible to remove.

If the content must stay private, combine the watermark with real protection: protect the PDF with a password, which encrypts the file so only people with the password can open it. The guide how to password-protect a PDF explains how to share that password safely.

Common questions

My PDF is a filled form. Should I do anything first? Yes: flatten it before adding the watermark. Flattening turns the form answers into ordinary page content, so they can no longer be changed and they display in every viewer, including phone apps that don't show form fields.

In what order should I watermark and add a password? Watermark first, then protect. Encrypted files can't be edited, so the watermark tool needs the unprotected version.

Can I use accents or other alphabets? The PDF watermark uses a standard font that supports Latin characters, accents included. Characters from other scripts (Cyrillic, Arabic, Chinese…) are replaced by "?".

Can I add a logo instead of text? No. Both tools add text watermarks only.

Will the watermark remove the original? No. You download a new copy; keep an unmarked original for yourself.