[thelist] 'watermarking' PDFs

[j.d. welch]

On Saturday, February 22, 2003, at 02:21 PM, aardvark wrote:

> i do this, sorta, with my letterhead... i created a PDF of my
> letterhead, and then made it into an annotation stamp, which i then
> stamped (in the correct location) on each page of a 50 page PDF... i

ah, i knew there had to be something clever like that.  by following an
adobe tutorial (http://www.adobe.com/support/techdocs/20b32.htm)
_exactly[0]_  i was able to create custom stamps[1], which is just what
i had in mind-- scalable, resizable, easy to do and removable later on.

the only catch is that only acrobat/acrobat reader pick up the stamp.
preview.app/xpdf/etc don't display it.  but close enough.  very cool
trick; thanks!

> when you export the PDF, make sure to prevent the user from
> adding/editing annotations, else they'll be able to
> move/delete/replace it, and may even accidentally select and move it
> while reading anyway...

yep, done that.  since some of the stuff is sensitive-ish, no printing
either :)

if anyone's interested, there's an example at
http://prospero.gotdns.org/cert/onepage.pdf

-jd

[0] i did what the manual said first and it broke _all_ the
annotations. grr
[1] from illustrator 10 pdf files no less; i can edit them later on.
i'm loving adobe today.

------------------------------------------------------------------
    J.D. Welch			|    so.there at showtunepink.com
    graphic designer    	|    http://www.showtunepink.com
    web developer       	|    http://kitschparade.ath.cx
    i'm available -> http://www.showtunepink.com/resume.html
------------------------------------------------------------------