Watermark & Page Numbers

about this tool

A watermark, page numbers, or both

Drop a PDF and set up either stamp. The watermark is text or a PNG or JPEG image, at any size, turn, colour and opacity, placed at one of nine positions or tiled across the whole page. The page numbers take a template with {n} and {total} — Page 1 of 9, 1 / 9, - 1 -, or anything you type — in arabic numbers, roman numerals or letters, starting at whatever number you like. Both stamps take a page-range expression, so a cover page or a set of appendices can be left alone.

Numbering counts over the pages you choose, not over the file: with 2- the second page of the document becomes number 1, and {total} is the last number given. Preview page 1 stamps the file and draws the first page with pdf.js, so you can check the placement before saving.

Pages that are stored rotated

A scanned landscape page is often a portrait page carrying a /Rotate 90 entry, and drawing on it naively puts the stamp along the side. The placement maths works in the coordinates the reader sees — the displayed size, with the corners mapped back into the page's own space — and turns the stamp to match, so "bottom centre" is the bottom of the page as displayed. That mapping is pure and tested for all four rotations.

What the built-in fonts can draw

PDF's standard fonts (Helvetica, Times, Courier) use WinAnsi encoding: Latin-1 plus a handful of typographic characters such as the euro sign, curly quotes and dashes. Greek, Cyrillic, CJK and emoji have no code there. Rather than write a file with missing glyphs, the tool names the characters it cannot draw and refuses until they are gone. Embedding a font of your own would mean shipping a font file and a subsetting library, which this page deliberately does not do.

What the file keeps

The document is loaded and rewritten by pdf-lib: pages, text, images, annotations and metadata stay as they were, with the stamps appended to each page's content and the producer set to this site. The stamp is always drawn on top, so opacity is what keeps the text underneath readable. Page size comes from the MediaBox, so a page with a smaller CropBox is measured by its full sheet. Encrypted PDFs are refused with the reason, since they cannot be changed without the password.

Limits

There is no drag-and-drop placement and no per-page positioning: the nine positions, the margin and the angle cover the usual cases. Tiles are spread evenly rather than clipped at the edges, so the outer ones sit inside the page. Descenders can dip slightly below the margin, since the margin is measured to the baseline box. Everything runs in your browser and nothing is stored between visits.

For a handwritten or typed signature placed on one page rather than a mark on every page, use sign PDF. Organize PDF is the tool if the page order needs fixing first.

questions

Can I put the watermark behind the text?

No. Everything is drawn on top of the page, because that is what pdf-lib can do without rebuilding the page. Low opacity gets the same look: the default 12 percent leaves the text underneath perfectly readable, and the panel warns when you go past 60 percent.

Which characters can the watermark use?

The PDF built-in fonts are Helvetica, Times and Courier, which cover Latin-1 and a handful of typographic characters. Greek, Cyrillic, CJK and emoji have no code in that encoding, so they are refused by name before anything is written, rather than producing a broken file.

How do I skip the cover page?

Put 2- in the pages box. Numbering counts over the pages you choose, so page 2 of the file becomes number 1, and {total} is 1 less than the page count. Start at also lets you carry on from another document.

What happens on landscape or scanned pages?

Pages that carry a rotation are handled: the stamp is placed where the reader sees it, so “bottom centre” is the bottom of the page as displayed, not the side. The stamp is turned to match.

Is anything uploaded?

No. pdf-lib reads and rewrites the file in your browser, and the preview is drawn there by pdf.js. Nothing leaves the page and nothing is stored between visits.