PDF Stamp Adder

What this tool does

The PDF Stamp Adder overlays a large predefined text stamp — DRAFT, CONFIDENTIAL, APPROVED, REJECTED, COPY, ORIGINAL, FINAL, or FOR REVIEW — onto every page of a PDF, or onto a selected page range. Each stamp is rendered in a colour that matches its intent: red for warnings and restrictions, green for approvals, blue for neutral status marks, and amber for review prompts. The stamp is drawn as large bold text at the centre of each page, optionally at a 45-degree diagonal angle, using pdf-lib in the browser. No file ever leaves your device.

Why you might need it

Document management in legal, financial, and corporate environments relies heavily on status stamps. A contract in review should be clearly marked “DRAFT” so that no one mistakes a preliminary version for the authorised document. A sensitive board presentation distributed to directors needs a “CONFIDENTIAL” overlay so that recipients are reminded of the document’s handling requirements. An invoice or report that has been signed off benefits from an “APPROVED” stamp before it is archived, so auditors can distinguish reviewed documents from those awaiting sign-off without opening each one individually.

Medical records, engineering drawings, grant applications, and regulatory submissions all operate under similar conventions. Scanning a paper “COPY” stamp onto a digital PDF is often not sufficient because it may be cropped or degraded during the scan — applying a digital stamp with this tool produces a clean, scalable text overlay that is embedded directly into the PDF structure.

How to use it

1. Drop your PDF onto the dropzone or click to browse for the file.
2. Select a stamp from the dropdown. A coloured preview badge shows the stamp text in its chosen colour.
3. Use the Stamp size slider to set how large the text appears — larger values produce a more prominent mark, smaller values a subtler one.
4. Adjust Opacity to control how transparent the stamp is relative to the underlying content. 20–30% is a common choice for working documents.
5. Tick Diagonal (45°) if you want the stamp rotated — this is the conventional style for most document types.
6. Optionally fill in the Page range field if you only want certain pages stamped. Leave it blank to stamp every page.
7. Click Apply stamp, wait for the indicator to complete, then download the result.

Common pitfalls

The stamp is drawn at the geometric centre of each page at the configured font size. Very small pages (such as A5 or business-card PDFs) may have text that spills outside the visible area if the font size is set too high — the slider goes up to 200 pt, which is appropriate for A3 and larger formats but would overrun an A5 page. Use the size slider to fit the stamp within the actual page dimensions; for letter and A4 pages, 60–100 pt is a safe range.

PDFs with embedded artwork or photographic backgrounds can make lighter stamp colours hard to read. If the stamp blends into the background, increase opacity or switch to a darker colour by choosing a different stamp from the list.

Tips and alternatives

When preparing a document for distribution as “FINAL”, apply the FINAL stamp before using the PDF Password Protector to restrict editing — this way the stamp is part of the protected content and cannot be removed by recipients without the owner password. For documents that need both a date and a status mark, use the PDF Watermark Adder’s text mode to add a date string at the bottom of each page, then run the output through this stamp tool for the categorical mark.

If you want a stamp with custom wording or a non-standard colour, the PDF Watermark Adder is the more flexible alternative and accepts any text string.