UK TeX FAQ -- question label watermark

### ‘Watermarks’ on every page

It’s often useful to place some text (such as ‘DRAFT’) in the background of every page of a document. For LaTeX users, this can be achieved with the draftcopy package. This can deal with many types of DVI processors (in the same way that the graphics package does) and knows translations for the word ‘DRAFT’ into a wide range of languages (though you can choose your own word, too). Unfortunately, however, the package relies on PostScript specials, and will therefore fail if you are viewing your document with xdvi, and won’t even compile if you’re using PDFLaTeX. (PDFLaTeX users need one of the other solutions below.)

The wallpaper package builds on eso-pic (see below). Apart from the single-image backdrops described above (“wallpapers”, of course, to this package), the package provides facilities for tiling images. All its commands come in pairs: one for “general” use, and one applying to the current page only.

The draftwatermark package uses the same author’s everypage package to provide a simple interface for adding textual (‘DRAFT’-like) watermarks.

More elaborate watermarks may be achieved using the eso-pic package, which in turn uses the package everyshi, or by using everypage. Eso-pic attaches a `picture` environment to every page as it is shipped out; you can put things into that environment. The package provides commands for placing things at certain useful points (like “text upper left” or “text centre”) in the picture, but you’re at liberty to do what you like.

Everypage allows you to add “something” to every page, or to a particular page; you therefore need to construct your own apparatus for anything complicated.

`draftcopy.sty`
  macros/latex/contrib/draftcopy (or browse the directory)
`draftwatermark.sty`
  macros/latex/contrib/draftwatermark (or browse the directory)
`eso-pic.sty`
  macros/latex/contrib/eso-pic (or browse the directory)
`everypage.sty`
  macros/latex/contrib/everypage (or browse the directory)
`everyshi.sty`
  Distributed as part of macros/latex/contrib/ms (or browse the directory)
`wallpaper.sty`
  macros/latex/contrib/wallpaper (or browse the directory)

This question on the Web: http://www.tex.ac.uk/cgi-bin/texfaq2html?label=watermark