How to remove a watermark from a PDF file?

I thought this would be a simple task, but it turned out the other way. The watermark is the very same (overlapping, but transparent) image on every single page. I created the PDF file myself (so no copyright worries here) using PDFCreator 0.9.8. I have already tried my friend's Adobe Acrobat Pro, but it didn't work. It tries to remove it, but it can't. I tried to remove header/footer, etc., but the watermark just won't disappear. How can I remove the watermark?

50k 12 12 gold badges 134 134 silver badges 151 151 bronze badges asked Jul 30, 2012 at 18:01 16.2k 25 25 gold badges 102 102 silver badges 158 158 bronze badges

PDF is an output format, like an electronic printed page. It isn't meant to be edited, and in most cases you won't be able to do what you're asking short of exporting the pages to images and photoshopping out the watermarks.

Commented Jul 30, 2012 at 18:06

Shopping recommendations are off topic for all stack exchange websites. To prevent this question from closing, I would recommend changing it to a how question, instead of what one

Commented Jul 30, 2012 at 22:47

It seems you would simply use PDFCreator 0.9.8 and set the option so a watermark is NOT added to each page. I assume this question is because you don't have the original source.

Commented Jul 31, 2012 at 16:51

7 Answers 7

For image-based watermarks, there are several tools that promise their automatic removal. For example:

All of these are free to try, but require a license to actually produce the desired output.

However, the watermark of this specific PDF file (which the OP sent me via email) isn't a single image that is repeated on all pages. As it turns out, PDFCreator hardcoded it (almost pixel by pixel) into every single one of them. This makes the watermark much more difficult to remove (and results in a rather bloated PDF file).

Since the watermark is actually composed of many tiny images, you can remove them with a PDF editor (e.g., Foxit Advanced PDF Editor), simply by selecting them and pressing Delete . Unfortunately, you have to repeat this for every page.

A less time-consuming solution would be to remove the watermark programmatically. We need:

Steps

  1. Download Pdftk and extract pdftk.exe and libiconv2.dll to %windir%\System32, a directory in the path or any other location of your choice.
  2. Download and install Notepad++.
  3. PDF streams are usually compressed using the DEFLATE algorithm. This saves space, but it makes the PDF's source illegible. The command
pdftk original.pdf output uncompressed.pdf uncompress 
q 9 0 0 9 2997 4118.67 cm BI /CS/RGB /W 1 /H 1 /BPC 8 ID Ÿ®¼ EI Q 
Find: q 9 0 0 9 2997 4118\.67 cm. Replace: (blank) Match case: checked Wrap around: checked Regular expression: selected . matches newline: checked 
pdftk uncompressed.pdf output nowatermark.pdf compress

The result is the same PDF without the watermark (and about half the size).