Adobe Acrobat 8 Standard

Add and edit backgrounds

A background appears behind text or images on the page. The background can be as simple as a solid color or you can use an image. You can selectively apply a background to only specific pages or page ranges in a PDF. A PDF supports only one background per page, but the backgrounds can vary from page to page.

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Before and after adding a background

Add, replace, or edit a background

  1. Choose Document > Background > Add/Replace.
    Note: If a message appears, telling you that the current document already has a background, click Replace Background. If you apply the new background to a limited range of pages, the old background will remain unchanged on pages outside of that range.
  2. (Optional) To apply the background selectively to individual pages, click Page Range Options, select Pages From, and enter beginning and ending page numbers; then choose a Subset option for applying the background only to odd pages, even pages, or both.
  3. For Source, specify what you want to serve as the background:

    • To reuse a background and background options that you saved in an earlier session, select it in the Saved Settings menu.

    • To apply a solid color background, select From Color. Then click the color swatch  to open the color picker, and select a color swatch or custom color.

    • To use an image, select File. Then click Browse, locate the image file you want to use, and select it.

    Note: Only PDF, JPEG, and BMP files can be used as background images.
  4. Adjust the appearance and position of the background, as needed:

    • To select a specific image in a multipage file, enter it in Page Number.

    • To show an image file at a specific percentage of its full-size display, enter a value in Absolute Scale.

    • To rotate a background image or colored area, enter a value in Rotation.

    • To give the background image or color some transparency, drag the Opacity slider to the left or enter a percentage value.

    • To resize a background image as a percentage of the PDF page size, select Scale Relative To Target Page.

    • To show or hide the background when printing or viewing on screen, click Appearance Options and select the items you want to apply.

    • To shift the position of the background image or colored area, enter values for the Vertical Distance from the Top, Center, or Bottom of the page and the Horizontal Distance from the Left, Center, or Right of the page.

  5. If a message appears after you click OK, telling you that backgrounds have already been defined for some pages in the page range, click OK.

Update a recently edited background image

If the original image file that you are using as a background changes, you can update the PDF to show the new version of the image rather than removing the old version and re-adding the new one.

  1. Choose Document > Background > Update.
  2. Click OK, or make other changes to the background options and then click OK.
Note: This process applies only to backgrounds added in either Acrobat 7 or Acrobat 8.

Remove a background from PDF pages

 Do one of the following:

  • To remove the background from only some pages in the PDF, choose Document > Background > Add/Replace. Then click Page Range Options, and enter page numbers and Subset options to restrict the background to the designated pages.

  • To remove the background from all pages, choose Document > Background > Remove, and click OK to confirm the removal.

  • To remove a background from all pages immediately after adding it, choose Edit > Undo Add Background.