I just added a Watermark & Add Stamp tool to MyPDFLabs, my free set of online PDF tools. It's for marking a PDF as a draft, confidential or paid, or putting a logo on it, so I wanted to share what it does and what I focused on.
Why a watermark tool?
Marking a document comes up more often than you'd think:
- Labeling a contract or proposal as DRAFT before sending it out
- Marking a document CONFIDENTIAL
- Stamping an invoice as PAID
- Putting a logo on reports, handouts and certificates
- Adding SAMPLE to a document you share as an example
Most of the tools I found wanted an account, added their own watermark, or gave me no way to see the result before downloading. I wanted something where you can see what you're doing as you go.
What it does
The tool has a controls panel on the left and a live preview of your pages on the right.
- Two modes: Text Watermark and Image Stamp
- Quick presets: Confidential, Draft, Sample, Do Not Copy, Paid and Urgent, or type your own text
- Styling: colour, font size, font family and bold or regular weight
- Opacity slider, so the mark doesn't make the page hard to read
- Rotation: diagonal (45°), horizontal, vertical or reverse (-45°)
- Position: center, tiled across the page, top or bottom
- Page selection: all pages, first page only, or a custom range
- Live preview that you can zoom and flip through before downloading
It needs no sign-up, adds no watermark of its own on the core tools, supports files up to 500MB, and deletes uploaded files automatically after processing.
What I thought about while building it
Watermarking looks simple, but a few design choices mattered:
- Show the result before the download. Opacity, size and rotation are hard to judge from numbers, so a preview you can flip through saves a lot of trial and error.
- Presets for the common cases. Most people want "CONFIDENTIAL" or "DRAFT" in a sensible default style, so one click should get them there.
- Defaults should be readable. A strong mark can make a page unreadable, so the default opacity stays low.
- Be honest about what a watermark is. It labels a document, it doesn't protect it. Someone determined can still copy text or try to remove it, so for sensitive files a password is the right tool.
- Privacy matters. People mark contracts, invoices and IDs, so I decided not to keep files around and not to ask for an account.
What I'd like feedback on
The site is still new, so I'd love honest opinions:
- Are the controls clear, or is there too much on the panel?
- Is the live preview useful, or would you rather have fewer options and a simpler flow?
- Which PDF tool should I add or improve next?
You can try it here: mypdflabs.com/tools/watermark
Thanks for reading, and I'll reply to every comment.
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