Stamps and watermarks are how a PDF declares its status: stamps place approval and status marks — preset ones like approved, draft and confidential, plus custom stamps of your own — and the text watermark lays a word or phrase across pages with angle, opacity and size control. Both can apply per page or across the document, which turns a bare received PDF into a clearly labeled draft, approval copy or confidential set in one pass.
Place a stamp
- Open the PDF and open the stamps tool.
- Pick a preset stamp — approved, draft, confidential and the rest of the standard set — or build a custom stamp with your organization's wording.
- Click the page to place it; drag to position it where the eye expects status marks, usually a corner or header zone.
- Apply to more pages or across the document as needed.
- Ctrl+S writes the stamps into the file.
Stamps are the officious-but-useful layer of document life: the reviewer's APPROVED that unblocks the next step, the DRAFT that stops a half-finished spec being quoted, the confidential banner legal insists on. Presets cover the common cases; custom stamps cover the house words — "REVIEWED — QA," "PAID," "RECEIVED 2026-09-04."
Text watermarks with full control
The watermark tool places text across the page as a design layer:
- Open the watermark tool and type the text.
- Set the angle — 45 degrees is the classic diagonal; 0 degrees reads like a header banner.
- Set opacity — low enough to read content through, high enough to be unmistakable. Around 10-25% is the usual band.
- Set the size so the word spans the page appropriately.
- Apply per page or document-wide, then save.
The three controls trade off: a large watermark needs less opacity, a small one more. Test on your densest page — the page where the watermark is least obtrusive is the one where it is actually legible.
Stamps vs watermarks vs images
The three overlapping tools sort cleanly by intent:
| Need | Tool |
|---|---|
| A status word with officiate styling, one page or all | Stamp (preset or custom) |
| A repeated word across every page, subtle | Text watermark |
| A logo or picture, positioned once or per page | Image insert, below content |
| A one-off approval with name and date | Signature |
Choosing by intent keeps documents consistent: status comes from stamps and watermarks, content imagery from image editing, personal approval from signatures.
Watermarks and document security
A watermark declares status; it does not enforce it. Anyone can edit a PDF, watermark included. When a document genuinely must not circulate, pair the marking with protection from the passwords and security guide — watermark for the honest reader, encryption for the rest. The two together are standard practice for confidential sets leaving the building.
Marking a received document set
A workflow that uses both tools plus the Bates tool:
- Apply the text watermark document-wide — DRAFT at 15% opacity, 45 degrees.
- Stamp the cover page with the custom review stamp.
- Run the header, footer and Bates numbering tool to add page identifiers for the set.
- Save; the marked file goes to review with status, provenance and page identity all present.
Three minutes, and the document set is now unambiguous in any reader — which is the entire job of this layer.
What to explore next
- Header, footer and Bates numbering for page identity across a set.
- Passwords and security to enforce what the watermark declares.
- Edit images for one-off visual placements outside the status layer.