How to add text, images, and shapes to a PDF
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Contents
To add text to a PDF, open the Edit PDF tool, add your file, choose Text, click on the page where the words should go and type. Pictures, signatures, rectangles, ellipses, lines, arrows, whiteout, highlights, freehand drawing and notes go on the same way: pick the tool, click or drag on the page. When everything is in place, press Apply & download.
Edit PDF runs entirely in your browser, so your PDF stays on your device and no account is needed. New content is written into the page as real text, shapes, and images, and the original pages are kept as they are rather than turned into pictures, so their own text stays selectable.
One thing to know before you start: Edit PDF adds new content on top of the page, and its Edit text tool retypes the file's own text one line at a time. It does not reflow whole paragraphs. Each PDF can be up to 100 MB.
Step by step
- 1Open the Edit PDF tool.
- 2Add your PDF. Its pages appear in your browser, and the file stays on your device.
- 3Choose a tool: Text, Image, Sign, a shape, Whiteout, Highlight, Draw or Note.
- 4Click on the page where it should go — or drag, for a shape — and type, for text.
- 5Select anything you placed to drag it, resize it from its handles, or change its font, colour or opacity. Undo and Redo step back and forward.
- 6Press Apply & download to save the edited PDF.
Placing text, images, and shapes
Every page of the PDF is shown as it looks in a viewer, and you place things by clicking on it. A text box opens for typing where you click; long lines wrap inside the box, and dragging its handles makes it wider, narrower or taller (never shorter than its words). Font (Helvetica, Times or Courier), size, colour, bold, italic, alignment and line height are set in the panel beside the page.
Rectangles and ellipses can have an outline, a fill, or both, with an adjustable opacity; lines can end in an arrowhead. Images must be PNG or JPG files of up to 10 MB each; they keep their proportions when you resize them from a corner. A signature can be drawn, typed, or taken from a picture of one.
Selected items can be dragged, nudged with the arrow keys, copied, pasted, duplicated and deleted, and they snap to the page's edges and centre lines, and to other items' edges and centres, as you move them. You can place items on as many pages as you like before you apply.
What Edit PDF changes, and what it leaves alone
Edit PDF adds, and with Edit text it retypes the PDF's own text a line at a time: a line you retype is removed from the page and written anew, and everything you did not touch stays exactly where it is. It does not reflow a paragraph. The pages are kept, not redrawn, so the original text stays selectable just as it was.
When you apply your edits, text, pictures, shapes and marks are written into the page itself. In the downloaded file they are part of the page, not a comment or a separate object that someone can move or delete in their PDF viewer. Links and form fields are the exception: they are saved as real links and fillable fields, so a reader can click and fill them.
Highlights, drawings, notes, shapes and lines can be the exception too: choose Save markups as comments beside Apply & download, and each is saved as a standard PDF annotation that other PDF apps list as a comment and let you select, edit or delete. Whiteout and redaction are always written into the page, because a cover saved as a comment could simply be deleted.
The page list beside the pages turns, inserts, deletes and reorders pages; everything placed on a page moves with it. Pages you do not change there keep their order, size and rotation.
Pages are shown the way your viewer shows them, after any rotation setting and with only their visible area, and what you place lands exactly there in the downloaded file, reading upright.
Changing the text that is already there
To rework the wording itself, convert the file with PDF to Word: it exports the PDF's selectable text as an editable Word document, as plain paragraphs in reading order, with each picture between them. Fonts, tables and page layout are not recreated, so it suits documents where the words matter more than the look.
Covering something is not the same as removing it
A whiteout box can cover a word, a number, or an old date, and the printed page will look clean. But whatever is underneath is still in the file: it can still be selected and copied, and anyone who removes the box in another editor sees it again.
When information must actually be gone, use Redact PDF instead. It covers the areas you choose and then rebuilds every page as a flattened image, so the text and drawings underneath are removed rather than hidden. The trade-off is that no text in the redacted copy can be selected any more.
For review marks on their own — highlights, outlines, notes, and arrows — Annotate PDF runs in your browser too, and offers the same choice: markups flattened into the page, or saved as comments.
Your PDF never leaves your device
Edit PDF is an in-browser tool. The PDF and any images you insert are read, edited, and saved on your own machine — there is no server step in the path, and no account is needed.
Text in English and the other Western European languages uses a font built into the engine. For any other script — Greek, Cyrillic, Bengali, Chinese, and the rest — the tool downloads a matching font the first time it is needed. If your text has characters none of its fonts can draw, or mixes in one box scripts that no single one of its fonts covers, it tells you before changing anything rather than leaving blanks in the page.
One honest caveat about working offline: The page and its processing engine load over the network, and parts of the engine are fetched the first time a step needs them. The processing itself runs on your device. Rendering a page that holds a JPEG 2000 or JBIG2 image, as scanned documents often do, downloads an image decoder from our site the first time it is needed, and that step needs a connection. Chinese, Japanese or Korean text whose font is not embedded in the PDF needs a character map, downloaded from our site the first time it is needed, and that step needs a connection. Drawing text in a script outside the Western European alphabet downloads a matching font from our site the first time it is needed, and that step needs a connection. The font download carries none of your document; it is the same file for everyone.
Common questions
Can I change the existing text in my PDF?
Yes, a line at a time. In Edit PDF, choose Edit text, click a line and retype it: the old words are removed from the file and yours are written where they stood. A scanned page has no text to edit, and the invisible text OCR PDF adds is not offered either: to change a scan's words, use PDF to Word with “Recognise text in scans (OCR)”. To rework whole paragraphs, convert the file with PDF to Word. A whiteout box only hides something; if the information must really be gone, draw a Redact box, or use Redact PDF.
Can I add an image or a logo to a PDF?
Yes. Choose Image, pick a PNG or JPG of up to 10 MB, then tap or click the page where it should go. Drag it to move it, resize it from a corner, and set its opacity in the panel beside the page.
Can I add content to more than one page?
Yes. Scroll to any page and place items on it; everything you place, on every page, is written in one pass when you press Apply & download.
Does my PDF leave my device when I edit it?
No. Edit PDF runs entirely in your browser, so the PDF and any images you add stay on your device from start to finish.
How large can my PDF be?
Up to 100 MB per file.