pdfcpu

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A PDF processor written in Go.

View the Project on GitHub pdfcpu/pdfcpu


Changelog

Watermark

Add a watermark to selected pages of inFile. Have a look at some examples.

Watermarks may be stacked on top of each other. This allows for producing more complex page stamps - a mixture of text, images and foreign PDF page content. Using description you can configure various aspects like position, offset, rotation, scaling and opacity. For text based watermarks you can also configure font name, font size, fill color and render mode.


WARNING
A watermark resides in the background of a page. How much of the watermark will be rendered visible on a page depends on the layers on top and the transparency involved. This applies to PDF in general. Eg. scanned PDF files usually consist of bitmap images spanning whole pages and will hide anything in the background including any watermark. For these cases use pdfcpu stamp with an opacity < 1 instead to get a similar result.


Usage

pdfcpu watermark add    [-p(ages) selectedPages] -m(ode) text|image|pdf -- string|file description inFile [outFile]
pdfcpu watermark update [-p(ages) selectedPages] -m(ode) text|image|pdf -- string|file description inFile [outFile]
pdfcpu watermark remove [-p(ages) selectedPages] inFile [outFile]

NOTE
In the Adobe world a watermark is text or an image that appears either in front of or behind existing document content, unlike a stamp comment aka stamp annotation that anybody reading the PDF can open, edit, move around and delete. The difference here is that a watermark is integrated into a PDF page as a fixed element. Within pdfcpu the meaning of these terms is slightly different:

where content may be text, an image or a PDF page.



Flags

flag description required
p(ages) selected pages no
m(ode) text, image or pdf yes


Common Flags

name description values
v(erbose) turn on logging  
vv verbose logging  
q(uiet) quiet mode  
u(nit) display unit po(ints),in(ches),cm,mm
c(onf) config dir $path, disable
upw user password  
opw owner password  


Arguments

name description required
string display string for text stamps
file file name for image or pdf stamps
description configuration string yes
inFile PDF input file yes
outFile PDF output file no


Description

A configuration string to specify watermark parameters.

You may use parameter prefixes as long as the parameter can be identified. eg. o: .7 is ambiguous because there is opacity and offset but op: .7 will do the job.

parameter description values default
fontname a basefont Please refer to pdfcpu fonts list Helvetica
scriptname ISO-15924 code Hans, Hant, Hira, Kana, Jpan, Hang, Kore  
points fontsize in points in combination with absolute scaling only 24
rtl right to left userfont on/off, true/false, t/f off
position the stamps lower left corner anchors: tl, tc, tr, l, c, r, bl, bc, br c
offset (dx,dy) float vals in user units eg. ‘15 20’ or ‘15.0 20.0’ 0 0
scalefactor   0.0 < i <= 1.0 followed by optional abs or rel 0.5 rel
aligntext horizontal text alignment l..left, c..center, r..right, j..justified c
strokecolor for rendering text (see mode) color 0.5 0.5 0.5 = gray
fillcolor, color for rendering text (see mode) color 0.5 0.5 0.5 = gray
backgroundcolor, bgcolor bounding box background color none
rotation rotation angle -180.0 <= i <= 180.0 0.0
diagonal render along diagonal 1 .. lower left to upper right 1
    2 .. upper left to lower right  
opacity   0.0 <= i <= 1.0 1
mode, rendermode apply fill color 0 .. fill 0
  apply stroke color 1 .. stroke  
  apply both fill & stroke color 2 .. fill & stroke  
margins bounding box margins for text i .. set all four margins 0
  requires bgcolor i j .. set t/b margins to i, set l/r margins to j  
    i j k .. set top to i, left/right to j, bot to k  
    i j k l .. set top, right, bottom, left margins  
border bounding box border for text i {round} {color} 0
  requires bccolor i .. border width > 0  
    round .. set round bounding box corners  
    color .. border color  

Only one of rotation and diagonal is allowed.

The following description parameters are for text based watermarks only:


Anchors for positioning

       
  left center right
top tl tc tr
  l c r
bottom bl bc br


Default description

'f:Helvetica, points:24, rtl:off, scale:0.5 rel, pos:c, off:0 0, align:c, fillc:#808080, strokec:#808080, rot:0, d:1, op:1, mo:0, ma:0, bo:0'

The default watermark configuration is:

In addition for text based watermarks:

You only have to specify parameters that differ from the default.

Examples

Text Based Watermarks

Create a watermark using defaults only:

$ pdfcpu watermark add -mode text -- "This is a watermark" "" in.pdf out.pdf


Create a watermark using scale factor 1:

$ pdfcpu watermark add -mode text -- "This is a watermark" "scale:1" in.pdf out.pdf

       


Create a watermark along the second diagonale using scale factor 0.9, default render mode fill and a fill color:

$ pdfcpu watermark add -mode text -- "This is a watermark" "scale:.9, d:2, c:.6 .2 .9" in.pdf out.pdf


Create a watermark with 0 degree rotation using scale factor 0.9 and render mode stroke:

$ pdfcpu watermark add -mode text -- "This is a watermark" "scale:.9, rot:0, mo:1" in.pdf out.pdf


Create a watermark with a counterclockwise rotation of 45 degrees using scale factor 1, render mode fill & stroke and a fill color:

$ pdfcpu watermark add -mode text -- "This is a watermark" "scale:1, rot:45, mo:2, c:.2 .7 .9" in.pdf out.pdf


Create a watermark using some multi line text, show its bounding box by setting bgcol, set all margins to 5 and a border width of 7 rendering round corners.

$ pdfcpu watermark add -mode text -- "Some multi\nline text" "ma:5, bo:7 round .3 .7 .7, fillc:#3277d3, bgcol:#beded9, rot:0" in.pdf out.pdf


Create a watermark with default rotation, using scale factor 1, font size 48, default render mode fill, a fill color and set opacity to 0.6:

$ pdfcpu watermark add -mode text -- "Draft" "points:48, scale:1, color:.8 .8 .4, op:.6" in.pdf out.pdf


Let’s assume we have a PDF where even pages are blank. We can add a watermark for theses pages saying “Intentionally left blank” like so:

$ pdfcpu watermark add -pages even -mode text -- "Intentionally left blank" "" in.pdf out.pdf

We also could have used pdfcpu stamp. There is really no difference since we apply only to empty pages here.


Image Based Watermarks

Create a watermark using defaults only:

$ pdfcpu watermark add -mode image -- "pic.jpg" "" in.pdf out.pdf


Create a watermark using 0 degree rotation and relative scaling of 1.0:

$ pdfcpu watermark add -mode image -- "pic.jpg" "scale:1 rel, rot:0" in.pdf out.pdf


Create a watermark using 0 degree rotation and absolute scaling of 1.0:

$ pdfcpu watermark add -mode image -- "pic.jpg" "scale:1 abs, rot:0" in.pdf out.pdf


Create a watermark using a clockwise rotation of 30 degrees and absolute scaling of 1.0:

$ pdfcpu watermark add -mode image -- "pic.jpg" "rotation:-30, scalefactor:1 abs" in.pdf out.pdf


Create a watermark using a clockwise rotation of 30 degrees and absolute scaling of 0.25:

$ pdfcpu watermark add -mode image -- "pic.jpg" "rot:-30, scale:.25 abs" in.pdf out.pdf

PDF Based Watermarks

Create a watermark using defaults only. This will apply page 1 of some.pdf:

$ pdfcpu watermark add -mode pdf -- "some.pdf:1" "" in.pdf out.pdf


This is how to create a watermark using defaults and page 2 of some.pdf:

$ pdfcpu watermark add -mode pdf -- "some.pdf:2" "" in.pdf out.pdf