Add an image or a logo to a PDF, without breaking the layout

Add the picture

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Place a logo on the invoice, step by step

Our invoice test file has an empty top right corner where a logo belongs. The steps are the same for a photo, a scan or a stamp image.

1. Open the PDF at /edit. Drop it on the page or choose it.
2. Press I, or click the picture icon in the tool strip, “Add a picture”.
3. Click on the page where the picture’s top left corner goes. The file picker opens.
4. Choose the file. The editor places it at a third of the page’s width (about 7 cm on A4), or smaller when the picture has fewer pixels than that, with its own height-to-width ratio.
5. The picture comes in selected. Drag it to move it. Drag a corner to resize it: pictures keep their proportions, so a logo never comes out squashed.
6. For the last millimetre, use the arrow keys: 1 point per press, 10 with Shift held. While you drag, the picture’s edges and centre catch on the page’s edges and centre and on the other objects; hold Alt to drag without that pull.
7. Save with the Save button or Ctrl+S.

Every step is in the Changes list on the right and undoes with Ctrl+Z. A picture copied in another app (a logo from a website, a screenshot) can also go straight in: click the page and press Ctrl+V, and it lands near the top left of the page in view.

Transparent PNG or JPG: why one brings a white box

A logo is usually coloured shapes on nothing. Whether “nothing” survives depends on the file format:

• A PNG with a transparent background sits cleanly over the page. The editor keeps the transparency: our 600 by 240 pixel test logo kept it in the saved file as a soft mask, at a cost of under 4 KB.
• A JPG has no transparency at all. Its background is always a colour, usually white, so it arrives as a white rectangle with the logo inside. On a white page that is invisible; over a coloured header or a table it shows.

The fix is upstream: export the logo again as a PNG with a transparent background from the file it was designed in, or ask whoever made it for that version. The editor does not cut backgrounds out of pictures.

Will it print sharp? The resolution arithmetic

A picture has pixels; a page has centimetres. What you see in print is the ratio, in dots per inch (dpi): the picture’s width in pixels divided by its width on paper in inches. 300 dpi prints crisp; 150 dpi is fine on screen and acceptable on paper; below about 100 dpi edges go soft.

Two things follow from how the editor places pictures:

• A small picture lands at 72 dpi. When it has fewer pixels than a third of the page is wide, the editor draws it 1 point per pixel, and 72 points make an inch. A 150-pixel logo comes in about 5 cm wide and prints soft. Drag a corner inwards to make it smaller and sharper, or find a bigger file.
• A huge picture is scaled down first. The longer side is capped at 2,000 pixels before the picture goes in. At a third of A4 that is still over 700 dpi, far more than any printer uses.

What a picture adds to the file size

The editor decides how to store each picture from its pixels:

The picture	Stored as	Measured on our invoice
A photo (no transparency, many colours)	JPEG at quality 85	A 1200 by 900 photo added 372 KB; kept pixel for pixel it would have added 3.0 MB
A logo, a diagram, a screenshot, anything transparent	Losslessly, every pixel kept	A 600 by 240 two-colour logo with a transparent background added 3.7 KB

The photo choice is the one trade-off: a JPG photo is compressed a second time, at a quality where the difference is hard to see. Logos and screenshots are never blurred by it. If the finished PDF is too heavy to send, Compress PDF shrinks the photos afterwards.

The same logo on every page

There is no “repeat on all pages” switch for pictures, and Watermark PDF adds text only for now. For a handful of pages, copy and paste does it:

1. Select the placed logo and press Ctrl+C.
2. Scroll to the next page and press Ctrl+V. The copy lands in the same spot as the original.
3. Repeat for each page, then save.

For a 48-page report that is 48 pastes, which works but is not a pleasure. A picture watermark across every page is planned and not available yet.

Pictures that are already in the file

The same Select tool moves, resizes and deletes pictures the PDF already had: click one, then drag it, pull a corner, or press Delete. Delete, move or resize an image in a PDF covers that side, including what happens to the file size.

What this cannot do

The editor places and arranges pictures; it is not an image editor. It does not crop a picture, turn it, recolour it or remove its background, and it does not wrap text around it: PDF pages do not reflow, so a picture placed over text simply covers it. Covering is not removing, either. The text under a picture is still in the file and still copies out, which matters if you placed the picture to hide something; for that, the white-out comparison and redaction are the right reading. And a logo is a mark, not a lock: anyone with an editor can move or delete it.

On a file with a digital signature, the editor adds your picture after the signed version so the signature stays valid for what was signed, and it says so when you save. For everything else the editor does, see Edit a PDF.