Free Online Add Watermark to PDF compared with Adobe Acrobat Pro, PDFsam and Foxit PDF products| Free Online Add Watermark to PDF (iLovePDF) | Adobe Acrobat Pro | PDFsam | Foxit PDF products (typical, Foxit PDF Editor checked) |
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| Watermark controls: The online tool stamps text or an image. Text options cover font, size, colour, background colour, shadow and opacity. Transparency is offered in steps (none, 75%, 50%, 25%), and rotation in steps of 45, 90, 180 or 270 degrees. | Watermark controls: Acrobat offers a Watermark command under Edit PDF, with text or image, font, size, colour, opacity and placement, plus a preview before applying. The pages consulted do not state whether specific pages can be targeted. | Watermark controls: PDFsam Enhanced offers text or image watermarks with 9 placement positions, rotation, opacity and a choice of above or behind the content. PDFsam Basic has no watermark tool. | Watermark controls: Typically text or image watermarks with position offsets, opacity, rotation and scale. Foxit PDF Editor also lets you place the mark behind or on top of the page content. |
| Page selection and layering: You can stamp all pages or a page range, and place the mark over or below the existing content. This suits a quick one-off job on a single document set. | | Page selection and layering: Target pages are selectable in PDFsam Enhanced, and the mark can sit above or behind page content. | Page selection and layering: Typically the page range can be all pages, a custom range, or only even or odd pages in Foxit PDF Editor. |
| Batch and reuse of settings: Several PDFs can be selected and processed in one go, and all pages are stamped when multiple files are chosen. No saved settings are described on the page. | | Batch and reuse of settings: PDFsam Enhanced has a Batch Watermark option for several documents, and Make Default stores your settings for future use. | Batch and reuse of settings: Foxit PDF Editor can save a configuration as a profile and apply it to other documents. Its batch dialog accepts multiple files and folders, and batch removal is also described. |
| Installation and file sources: Runs in the browser with no installation. Files come from your computer, Google Drive or Dropbox. The page does not state file size limits or how uploaded files are handled, so check this for confidential drawings or specifications. | Installation and file sources: Desktop application, with the watermark command in the Edit PDF tool. Which Acrobat plan includes it is not stated on the pages consulted. | Installation and file sources: PDFsam Basic is a free and open source (GNU AGPL) desktop application for Windows, macOS and Linux, with merge, split, mix, rotate, extract and insert tools. Watermarking requires the paid PDFsam Enhanced, whose help pages do not name an operating system. | Installation and file sources: Desktop editors, with documentation for both a Windows product and a Mac edition of Foxit PDF Editor. |
| When to choose it: Choose it for occasional watermarking without installing software, when the document is not sensitive. | When to choose it: Choose it when your team already works in Acrobat and wants the watermark within the same editing tool. | When to choose it: Choose PDFsam Enhanced for batch watermarking with saved defaults, or PDFsam Basic only if you need page-level tools without watermarks. | When to choose it: Choose a Foxit editor when you need reusable watermark profiles and batch processing on many documents. |