Add Stamp
About the Add Stamp
The Add Stamp tool overlays a bold, official-looking text stamp — APPROVED, REJECTED, DRAFT, CONFIDENTIAL, FINAL, URGENT, or COPY — onto a specific page of a PDF, complete with a colored border box and a slight diagonal tilt that mimics the look of a traditional rubber ink stamp. This is a quick way to visually communicate a document's status without writing a note or attaching a separate cover sheet.
You choose from a preset dropdown of common stamp labels, pick a color using the color picker, and specify the page you want stamped. The tool centers the stamp on that page, draws a bordered box around the text at low opacity behind it for visual weight, and rotates the whole stamp slightly (-15 degrees) for that familiar hand-stamped look, rendering the label in bold at a large, clearly legible size.
This is a natural fit for any workflow involving document approval or status tracking: marking a submitted form as APPROVED once it's been reviewed and signed off, stamping REJECTED on an application that didn't pass review, marking a document DRAFT while it's still being finalized, or applying URGENT to flag something that needs immediate attention in a shared folder or inbox. Because the available labels cover the most common status markers used across business and administrative workflows, you likely won't need custom text for typical approval and review processes.
Stamps and watermarks serve related but distinct purposes: a watermark (available in the dedicated Add Watermark tool) is usually a full-page diagonal overlay meant to mark every page consistently, while a stamp is a single, centered, bold marker typically applied to just the cover page or a specific page to convey a document's status at a glance. For adding a hand-drawn signature alongside your stamp, the PDF Signer tool provides that capability, and for custom text that isn't covered by the preset stamp options, the PDF Editor tool lets you add any text you need.
If your organization already uses a specific brand color, matching the stamp's color to that palette makes approved and reviewed documents feel consistent with your other official communications rather than looking like a generic system-default marker. For documents that need both a status stamp and a signature — a formally approved contract, for instance — apply the stamp first and then use the PDF Signer tool afterward, since stamping the same page a second document already has a signature on can sometimes make the layout feel crowded if the stamp lands near the signature area; positioning them on different areas of the page, or across different pages entirely, usually produces a cleaner final result.
Because the stamp is rendered directly into the page content at the moment you apply it, it will appear identically to anyone who later opens, prints, or copies the document, regardless of which PDF viewer or operating system they're using — there's no risk of a stamp looking different, or not appearing at all, depending on the recipient's specific software the way some proprietary annotation formats sometimes do.
Step-by-Step Instructions
- Upload your PDF into the drop zone.
- Choose a stamp label from the dropdown: APPROVED, REJECTED, DRAFT, CONFIDENTIAL, FINAL, URGENT, or COPY.
- Pick a stamp color using the color picker.
- Enter the target page number.
- Click "Add Stamp" to apply it.
- Your browser downloads the result automatically as stamped.pdf.
Benefits & Use Cases
- Instantly communicates a document's approval status
- Preset labels cover the most common business review workflows
- Authentic rubber-stamp look with a slight tilt and border
- Fully customizable color to match your branding or convention
- Fast, one-click application per stamp
- Works well alongside the Signer and Watermark tools