Watermark behind filled form field

Forum|Forum|6 years ago
November 6, 2019
1 reply
3178 views

Is there a way to make a watermark show on top of a form field (text, button, etc.) that has a fill color specified? I've played around with the watermark settings, but no matter what I do it shows behind the form field.

I attached a sample PDF demonstrating the behavior I'm seeing.

I'm using Acrobat Pro DC 2019.021.20049 on Windows 10.

textFieldFill_Watermark.pdf

This topic has been closed for replies.

Thom Parker

Community Expert

No, this is not possible. Watermarks are page content, and form fields are annotations. Annotations are always drawn on top of page content.

Why do you want this?

You can force form fields to draw on top of one another, so you could place a button with an image on it above the form field.

Or you could simply hide the form field.

Thom Parker - Software Developer at PDFScriptingUse the Acrobat JavaScript Reference early and often

A

axell19412299Author

Participant

Hi Thom,

Thanks for the reply.

I created the watermark with the "fixed size" option selected which generates it as an annotation. If you dig into the document structure (under the "Content" tab of the left-side navigation pane), the watermark is listed under "Annotations".

Here's the use case - we have a customer with a 3D PDF document. They have a text form field with a white background placed on top of the 3D annotation that's used to display approval names/dates. When the approval status changes, an API call is made to the watermark service to place a watermark on the white text field. The field needs to have a white background so that the 3D model behind it doesn't interfere with the approval text. In this case, the watermark is being placed behind the white text field instead of in front of it, so it's not visible.

In general, I don't love placing form fields on top of the 3D annotation, which is really why we have this issue. But the customer doesn't want to change the doc layout, which is why I'm looking for a workaround.

Thanks,
Axel

Thom Parker

Community Expert

It may be an annotation, but it's being drawn before the form fields. If you want an image to appear on top of the text field, you'll need another field. Use a Button field to display your image. Create it up front, so you know is drawing position, and make it hidden, then you'll only need to unhide it. This is a much better strategy all around than adding a watermark.

Thom Parker - Software Developer at PDFScriptingUse the Acrobat JavaScript Reference early and often

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