Draw on a PDF: shapes, arrows and lines that stay put

Start drawing

Edit PDFReal text editing, objects, annotations, forms. Free, runs on your device.Open

The shape kit

Tool	Key	Options in the bar	Default
Shape: Rectangle, Ellipse	S	Line colour, Line width, Fill colour or none	Red, 2 pt, no fill
Shape: Line, Arrow	S	Line colour, Line width	Red, 2 pt
Draw (freehand)	P	Line colour, Line width	Blue, 2 pt

There are 8 colours (ink, grey, white, red, orange, yellow, green, blue, chosen to print well) and 5 widths: 1, 2, 3, 5 and 8 points.

Draw a box and an arrow, step by step

On our 48-page report test file, a chart page needs a box around one bar and an arrow pointing a reader to the matching table cell.

1. Open the PDF at /edit and scroll to the page.
2. Press S. In the options bar, click the rectangle, keep the red line and set the width to 3 pt. Leave Fill on none so the chart shows through.
3. Drag from one corner of the area to the opposite corner. What you drag is what you get; let go and the rectangle is placed and selected.
4. Press S again if needed, click the arrow, and drag from the margin to the table cell. The arrowhead goes where you let go.
5. Adjust with the Select tool (V): drag a shape to move it, drag a corner to resize it, use the arrow keys to nudge it by 1 point (10 with Shift). Edges catch on the page’s edges and on other objects; hold Alt to drag freely.
6. Save with Ctrl+S.

A selected shape shows its Line colour, Line width and Fill colour in the panel on the right, so a box drawn in the wrong red changes in one click. Unlike pictures, drawings stretch when you pull a corner: a circle can become an oval.

Freehand on a touch screen or with a stylus

Press P (on a phone, tap Draw in the bottom bar) and draw with a finger, a pen or the mouse. The stroke is smoothed into curves as you let go, so a quick circle around a word comes out clean rather than jagged, and it stays a vector: zoom to 400 % and the line is still sharp. On a phone, two fingers zoom the page while one finger draws.

A drawn name is a different job with a different tool. The Sign tool (G) makes a signature, initials or the date and places it at the right size, and Sign and fill a PDF explains what such a signature does and does not prove.

What a drawing is in the file

Shapes and freehand strokes are written into the page content as vector paths, the same kind of object as the lines of a table. We checked on our invoice test file: after a rectangle, an arrow and a freehand stroke were added and saved, the page had 3 more objects and still 0 annotations. They are light: the arrow added 393 bytes and an 80-point freehand stroke 1.4 KB.

That choice has consequences, mostly good:

• Every viewer shows them and every printer prints them, because they are the page, not a comment layered on it. No viewer setting can hide them.
• They stay put: a drawing sits at fixed coordinates on the page and moves only when someone edits it.
• They are not listed as comments. Acrobat’s Comments list and Preview’s Highlights and Notes will not show them. When the marks are review feedback that the author should list, tick off and clear, use the Mark tool and notes instead; Highlight and comment on a PDF covers that.
• They can be removed, by anyone with an editor that changes page content, getPDF included.

A box over text hides nothing

A filled rectangle over a line of text covers it on screen and on paper, but the text is still in the page underneath: select all and copy, and it pastes out. That is white-out, and the white-out comparison shows exactly what it leaves in the file. To take text out, delete it or use Redact PDF.

What the drawing tools cannot do

They have no transparency setting, no dashed lines, no Shift key to force a straight or square shape (use Line for straight, and drag carefully for square), and no rotate handle. Lines and arrows have no fill. A freehand stroke cannot be edited point by point after it is placed; undo it with Ctrl+Z and draw again. Shapes cannot be attached to a note so that they move together. And shapes someone else added in Acrobat as comments show on the page but do not select in getPDF until Flatten PDF has made them page content. For text boxes, pictures and every other change, see Edit a PDF.