Watermark a draft before circulating it

A draft that escapes without a mark on it comes back six months later as though it were final. This stamps every page and sets a password on the copy that goes out.

• The mark goes on every page, not just the first.
• The password is typed into a masked field and never saved anywhere.
• Runs in this tab, which matters for an unpublished draft.

A mark is cheaper than an explanation

The cost of an unmarked draft is not that somebody reads it. It is that somebody forwards it, and then quotes it, and then a version nobody approved is the version three teams are working from. A visible mark on every page makes that mistake almost impossible to make by accident.

The stamp goes on before anything that compresses, and if a compression step is added the plan moves it for you and prints the reason: a mark applied after compression re-inflates most of what the compression saved, so the file ends up larger than it needed to be for no gain at all.

The password and what it is worth

Standard PDF encryption keeps the document shut against somebody without the password, which is the ordinary case and the useful one. It is not a rights management system: whoever can open the file can screenshot it, print it and retype it, and no PDF feature has ever changed that.

The password is typed into a masked field when the plan runs. It is never read out of the instruction, never stored in a saved workflow and never carried in a shared link, and the microphone stands down entirely while that field has focus so a dictated instruction cannot capture it.

Everything happens here. An unpublished draft posted to a free watermarking site has been published, to somebody, which is the thing the watermark was meant to prevent. The stamping and the encryption both happen in this tab, and nothing about either is kept once it closes.

Can I change the wording of the stamp?

Yes. The tool takes the text and the style before it stamps anything.

Does the watermark stop copying?

No. It marks the document. Anyone who can open a file can copy what it says.

Support and billing: support@gosmartpdf.com. Operated by Mrityunjay Kumar, India. Payments by Dodo Payments, our merchant of record.

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