How to Add Watermarks to Google Docs?

June 6, 2022

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In this tutorial, we show you how to add watermarks to Google Docs. We recommend you study this manual carefully and start practicing!

Checklist of crucial points we aim to highlight here:

Adding a Watermark Via the New Feature
Customizing the Watermark
Adding the Watermark Manually

And here, we place a watermark on the Google document in two ways: on all the pages automatically and on a single page manually.

Of course, you’d want to protect your intellectual property and sign it in some way, be it an article, a drawing, music, etc. And for that, we frequently use watermarks. Fortunately, Google has made it really simple in Google Docs and has even added a dedicated shortcut for that recently. Let’s look at how to add watermarks to Google documents!

Watch the video from https://thegoodocs.com/ and find out how to add watermarks to Google Docs:

NB! Please note that all our customization here is random, and we make some samples to show you how particular options work. And you customize everything according to the requirements you need to follow, your tasks, ideas, etc.

Adding a Watermark Via the New Feature

Earlier you would have had to go to the separate Google Drawings app and make up an image there. And only after that could you transfer it into the document and use it there. But now, Google has made it possible to put a watermark over the document right away, straight inside the document.

So, go to the “Insert” item on the toolbar at the top of the page, and somewhere in the middle, you will find the “Watermark” item. Pressing it will bring up the bar on the right

And this is exactly where you select an image (press “Select image”) to turn it into the watermark. Here on top, you have the image uploading options. And this time, we choose the most common one, for example, to upload it from the computer (“Upload”). Click “Browse” and locate the image on your PC or just open the explorer, locate the image, and drag and drop it into the necessary area

On the document, it already appears partially transparent and looks just the way we need. And you have it on every page of the document. Basically, this method is just great when you need to put a watermark on every single page of the document really fast, but that’s not all to it

Customizing the Watermark

Then you would certainly need to move the watermark elsewhere. And for that, find some empty space near the image and double-click to select it. Now, press-hold on the highlighted frame and move it where you need it to be

Then you would certainly need to change the size of the watermark. So, you can use the drop-down for that (“Formatting” — “Scale”) or do it in a common way by pulling the squares on the frame of the image. For instance, we will change the “Scale” option to 95% to show you how it works

And sometimes you may need to rotate the watermark, — and for that, select the watermark and pull the circle on top of its frame left or right, find a perfect angle, and release

NB! Please, pay attention that the watermarks and all the changes with them will be duplicated across all the pages of the document for all the watermarks.

And finally, some other visual adjustments can be applied manually.

When the watermark is selected, you can uncheck the “Faded” box, which will remove the transparency

You can click on “More image options” below. Here you have the “Size & Rotation” item. Then the “Position” option, and then you have “Recolor” to apply some basic color filters to the watermark right here. And the final “Adjustments” option lets you manually choose the transparency by moving the slider. Here you have the options such as “Transparency”, “Brightness”, and “Contrast”

NB! The flaw of this method, though, may be that if you need to put multiple watermarks on a single page, you need to repeat all the necessary customization options over and over again for every next image, which is sometimes not really convenient. And this is why we have the second classic manual way to put a watermark onto a document.

Adding the Watermark Manually

So, basically, the watermark is just a partially transparent image put over the text. And the second way is just about that.

NB! And by using this method of adding the watermark, the watermark won’t be duplicated on all the pages. So, you can copy it manually to multiple pages if necessary.

We simply upload the image by going to the “Insert” item on the toolbar at the top of the page. And we select “Image” here. Then you can choose either one of the options (in the screenshot below, you can look at all the options to download the image here and select the necessary one). For example, we choose “Upload from computer”. We locate the necessary image in the File Explorer and double-click on it. Here it is on the page, and it doesn’t matter how the watermark looks now, because we can easily customize it

The next thing we do — we select the image, which will bring up the little bar below the picture, where we press on the last but one button (“In front of text”), meaning to put an image over the text

And while the image is still selected, we go to “Image options” on the toolbar, which opens the sidebar, where we click on the “Adjustments” item. The first slider here stands for transparency adjustment (“Transparency”), and by moving it left and right, you define how visible your image will be. Moreover, you can use here the “Brightness” and the “Contrast” options. For instance, personally, we like when the watermark is barely visible and does not overlap the content, yet reminds of the author. For example, we are customizing the watermark a little to show you how it works. And you customize the watermarks as you need

Then you can resize and rotate the watermark in the first dropdown for “Size & Rotation” or do it manually by pulling the squares on the edges of the image. And then rotate it by pulling the circle on the top left or right

And there are even more image options that you can use to customize the watermarks (you can look at them in the screenshot below)

For example, here are our watermarks

So, Google Docs provides a vast range of settings that can be applied to the watermarks here.

We hope this tutorial will help you learn how to add watermarks to Google Docs. Good luck!

Written by

Team TheGoodocs

We are a team of creative people who dream of sharing knowledge and making your work and study easier. Our team of professional designers prepares unique free templates. We create handy template descriptions for you to help you choose the most suitable one. On our blog, you'll find step-by-step tutorials on how to use Google Products. And our YouTube channel will show you all the ins and outs of Google products with examples.