Watermark on every page in Designer (batch job)

[LSweet]

Hello! I just watched a fantastic YouTube video about how to use batch to add watermark to a lot of photos at once*. I tried to use it on a pdf I created using Designer, and it added the watermark to the first page only. I then tried the same batch job using a Designer file, and it did not work at all. 

Is there a way to do a batch to add watermarks to every page of many Designer files at once?

 

Thank you!

 

*ETA: using Affinity Photo

Edited November 21, 2021 by LSweet
clarification

[Old Bruce]

I guess you could try writing a Macro to choose the various artboards starting at the bottom or top and step through them pasting the clipboard content (Your watermark) onto each artboard, Then you can just include this Macro in the batch job when you run one.

Might work....

[v_kyr]

Designer files? Batch jobs & Affinity macros which handle Designer format files?

[Old Bruce]

13 minutes ago, v_kyr said:

Designer files? Batch jobs & Affinity macros which handle Designer format files?

Use Photo.

[v_kyr]

2 minutes ago, Old Bruce said:

Use Photo.

11 hours ago, LSweet said:

to do a batch to add watermarks to every page of many Designer files at once?

 

[Wosven]

For this, you can try exporting to PDF, opening the PDF in APub and add a Master page with the watermark on all the pages.

[LSweet]

1 hour ago, Old Bruce said:

Use Photo.

Old Bruce, I should have said that I used Affinity Photo to do the Batch job, which only showed a watermark on page 1 of the PDF. So that's why I am wondering if I can use Designer to make the watermark appear on all pages.

[Old Bruce]

5 minutes ago, LSweet said:

Old Bruce, I should have said that I used Affinity Photo to do the Batch job, which only showed a watermark on page 1 of the PDF. So that's why I am wondering if I can use Designer to make the watermark appear on all pages.

I will leave it to you to see if, when opened in Photo, a multi artboard designer document can have a macro apply something (via the clipboard) to each artboard. If yes (and I have doubts about it) then will it work with a batch job.

I have no desire to apply anything to the various multi artboard designer documents which I have. I am only mildly curious about this.

[walt.farrell]

20 minutes ago, LSweet said:

I should have said that I used Affinity Photo to do the Batch job, which only showed a watermark on page 1 of the PDF.

I am surprised you even got that far.

If you have a PDF, you will have to Open it for editing in Publisher, and then use Master Pages, as @Wosven mentioned above. Note that Opening the PDF requires that you have all the fonts installed.

I doubt you can do anything to add watermarks to a multiple-Artboard designer document (.afdesign), except Open the file, and then work through the Artboards one-by-one adding the watermark. I think you'll have to do that manually, by selecting an Artboard and then (if you Opened the document in Photo) manually running the macro.

[LSweet]

2 hours ago, Wosven said:

For this, you can try exporting to PDF, opening the PDF in APub and add a Master page with the watermark on all the pages.

@Wosven I just tried this method you suggested. It looks great overall. For some reason, the cover page (page 1) is not showing the watermark, which is wonderful. (I wish I knew why.) 

Since I have more than 50 pdfs that I need to add watermarks to, I would love a way to accomplish this same look with a batch job. So far this is definitely the best solution.

[Wosven]

15 minutes ago, LSweet said:

For some reason, the cover page (page 1) is not showing the watermark,

Probably because you didn't used a master page on the cover, or an image is on top.

17 minutes ago, LSweet said:

I would love a way to accomplish this same look with a batch job.

As @walt.farrell said, AP won't accomplish this, since it's not made to process pages.

In AD, you could accomplish this adding a symbol on each artboard, and displaying/hidding it...

In Apub, you can either open the PDF and add the Watermark master page, or try creating a template in which you import a dummy PDF with a lot of pages, and add the watermark master page.

Later, you'll only have to replace the PDF by a real one, and export only the needed number of pages depending of the ones in the PDF.

With the last option, either the page format of PDF and template should be the same, or you can try resizing the document before replacing the dummy PDF... but I'm not sure of the result (if the real PDF will be resized also after import, or will be at the right size).

[v_kyr]

Inread for watermarking PDF files, see also this site here.