"Watermark" on PDF files!


Customer Service


This watermark runs through module text, and as far as I am concered, makes these modules USELESS. I wish I had known what they were going to look like before I wasted my $$$$.

Paizo Employee Chief Technical Officer

graffspree wrote:
This watermark runs through module text, and as far as I am concered, makes these modules USELESS. I wish I had known what they were going to look like before I wasted my $$$$.

If you really have a problem with the watermarking, contact customer.service@paizo.com and we'll issue a refund (once)... but I'll tell you now that very few people agree that two lines of overlapping text on a page render the contents "useless."

As for the placement of the watermark, it's in the same relative locations on every file, in what we *hope* will be margin space for most pages of most products.

-Vic.
.


Vic Wertz wrote:
As for the placement of the watermark, it's in the same relative locations on every file, in what we *hope* will be margin space for most pages of most products.

Kind of like what television stations do now, eh? There's nearly always a semitransparent logo in the corner, but some stations practically have movies (opaque, too) playing in another quadrant from time to time. I guess the stations *hope* there's nothing important going on in that quarter of the screen at that moment. :-)

I agree that the PDF probably isn't useless, but I'd be a bit irritated as well, for essentially the same reason that I get mad at the TV when a superimposed Jerry Stiller (whose comedy I always enjoy) dances in front of a show I'm trying to watch. If he were actually in my living room I'd throw a shoe at him or at least say "hey, man, do you mind?".

Vic, perhaps Paizo could do something resembling a traditional watermark? (That is, faint and in the background.) A lot of later TSR PDFs, for example, are just haphazard paper scans which do in fact have text in what would be normally considered the margins, and a traditional watermark might be preferable.

Paizo Employee Chief Technical Officer

jthilo wrote:
...perhaps Paizo could do something resembling a traditional watermark? (That is, faint and in the background.)

We can't really put it in the background because, for one, many of the products don't have separate layers.

We did spend some time trying to make it as non-intrusive as possible while still retaining functionality. That is, it has to be "just intrusive enough" to be a deterrent against public reposting, but not so intrusive as to annoy most of the time. We think we did pretty well, because we don't get that many complaints, but I'm sure we'll revisit it occasionally.

-Vic.
.


Useless was a bit harsh. I print out these pdf modules and look over them for "old times" sake, and the watermark is a real distraction. I hope in the future you come up with a compromise solution.

E-mail has been sent to customer service.


Perhaps one line instead of two? Watermarked products from other companies I've used generally carry only the one, at the bottom corner.


Likewise. My PDFs from DriveThruRPG say only my name and order number in the bottom-left, in one line, in a white font with no outline. Because it's white, I don't notice it when I am reading page text, which is black-on-white. It's only really apparent on the cover, which is suitable enough identification that I couldn't share the file if I wanted to.

Speaking of sharing, how do the Paizo crew feel about a DM sharing purchased PDFs with his four players in an online game?

Paizo Employee Chief Technical Officer

Jonathan Drain wrote:
Likewise. My PDFs from DriveThruRPG say only my name and order number in the bottom-left, in one line, in a white font with no outline. Because it's white, I don't notice it when I am reading page text, which is black-on-white. It's only really apparent on the cover, which is suitable enough identification that I couldn't share the file if I wanted to.

That's interesting to note... I'll bump up revisiting the watermarks on the to-do list.

Jonathan Drain wrote:
Speaking of sharing, how do the Paizo crew feel about a DM sharing purchased PDFs with his four players in an online game?

Given that we don't own any of the intellectual properties for any of the PDFs we sell right now, it's not really our place to say. You'd have to inquire with the individual copyright owner(s).

-Vic.
.

Paizo Employee Chief Technical Officer

Ok... here's what we're going to do. We're going to keep it centered at the top and bottom (as that minimizes the chance of interfering with page numbers and headers and footers that are aligned to the outside edge, which are more common than centered headers, footers, and page numbers), but we'll push it further up at the top and further down at the bottom, to within a few pixels of the edges. We'll also screen it back to a light grey instead of black.

I'm not quite sure when this will happen, but when it does, Gary will mention it here. You'll all be able to repersonalize any PDFs you already own to get the new style of watermark.

-Vic.
.

Paizo Employee Chief Technical Officer

Darkwolf445 wrote:
Perhaps one line instead of two? Watermarked products from other companies I've used generally carry only the one, at the bottom corner.

To be clear, it's one line, but it appears at both the top and bottom.

-Vic.
.


Checking my PDF of Arcana Evolved, the way that DriveThruRPG does it is to put your name and order number in the bottom-left corner of every page. It's black, but with a white outline - at 100% zoom this makes it appear a pale-ish grey, therefore it is clearly visible but doesn't detract from the black text. In print of course, the higher resolution means it would show up as thin black text. The font size is quite small and at 100% zoom is one or two pixels from the side of the page. Sans-serif font. I think most books have enough margin that this small amount of text at the bottom-left doesn't overlap anything.

Clearly, I prefer this to the paizo.com PDF I downloaded a few days ago. It's more intrusive, but it doesn't mark it any better. I'm not going to share a PDF with my name an order number on it (name is enough to link it to me, order number is enough to trace it to my credit card and thus my identity). Making the watermark three times as long, twice as frequent and twice as visible only spoils the viewer's enjoyment of a product he's paid for. Something at the bottom is a footnote, something in small or pale text there not very important. Something in a serif font is mistaken by the eye as body text, and something at the top of the page may be mistaken by the eye as a heading. It doesn't make the book unreadable, but it's not a good way to encourage repeat custom when DriveThruRPG has smaller watermarks and RPGNow (at last I checked) has none.

The ideal watermark, in my opinion at least, is one where the customer barely notices it (if at all), doesn't mind it when he sees it, and which if printed out or fileshared, retains this mark that can be traced to the culprit. If that's your intention, the watermark should be as subtle as possible, not as visible as possible.

</rant>

Paizo Employee Senior Software Developer

Jonathan Drain wrote:
The ideal watermark, in my opinion at least, is one where the customer barely notices it (if at all), doesn't mind it when he sees it, and which if printed out or fileshared, retains this mark that can be traced to the culprit. If that's your intention, the watermark should be as subtle as possible, not as visible as possible.

We're less interested in tracking down culprits than in preventing the material from being posted in the first place. Having one's email address on every page seems to be an effective deterrent.

However, we are looking at ways to make our watermark less intrusive. Our watermarking system was tested primarily against Dragon back issues, which tend to have clearly defined top and bottom margins. Turns out that many of the scanned PDFs we are selling now were scanned with somewhat less than precise care, so the watermark gets in the way more often. So it's now on my to-do list to make the watermark less obnoxious.

Dark Archive

Pathfinder Adventure Path Subscriber

So some watervark text ran over a little bit of actual text?...All I can say is "Boo Hoo". Be thankful these PDF resources are available online at all. What DM worth his salt can't substitue his/her own imagination for any lost information?

Obviously, somebody went to a lot of work to make these PDF's available, and Paizo is only trying to protect their investment. Bottom line is...if it bothers you that much, start prowling eBay, or the used section of your local gamestore. Maybe you'll find an original copy. Then again, maybe not, in which case, a watermarked PDF is better than no resource at all.

Paizo Employee Chief Technical Officer

Saul Flanner wrote:
...Paizo is only trying to protect their investment...

Actually, we're trying to protect our publishers' investments (and are contractually required to with most of the publishers). We have no investment in the intellectual properties of the PDFs we're selling. Even the Dungeon and Dragon issues are owned by Wizards of the Coast.

-Vic.
.


Saul Flanner wrote:

So some watervark text ran over a little bit of actual text?...All I can say is "Boo Hoo". Be thankful these PDF resources are available online at all. What DM worth his salt can't substitue his/her own imagination for any lost information?

Obviously, somebody went to a lot of work to make these PDF's available, and Paizo is only trying to protect their investment. Bottom line is...if it bothers you that much, start prowling eBay, or the used section of your local gamestore. Maybe you'll find an original copy. Then again, maybe not, in which case, a watermarked PDF is better than no resource at all.

I wonder why some people bother to post at all. People raise a legitimate complaint about something they are paying for and someone has to start ACTING superior.

Obviously, those who posted know these pdfs are available other places without watermarks, or free through illegal sites. We choose to pay for them here.

Lighten up.


Darkwolf445 wrote:


I wonder why some people bother to post at all. People raise a legitimate complaint about something they are paying for and someone has to start ACTING superior.

Obviously, those who posted know these pdfs are available other places without watermarks, or free through illegal sites. We choose to pay for them here.

Lighten up.

Agreed.

Considering that this wargaming site (of all places) has managed to remain so civil in tone, which constitutes a clear internet rarity, it is somewhat hope-crushing when someone unnecessarily raises their dukes.

Why… it just isn’t Paizonian.


Vic Wertz wrote:

Ok... here's what we're going to do. We're going to ...

-Vic.

Thank you, I just printed out a few of the D&D modules I purchased several weeks ago and was coming here to ask about this when I saw the thread. The top watermark runs through the text on many pages, making that top text unreadable. A little frustrating. Moving it to the absolute top of the paper should do fine.

Paizo Employee Chief Technical Officer

Vic Wertz wrote:

Ok... here's what we're going to do. We're going to keep it centered at the top and bottom (as that minimizes the chance of interfering with page numbers and headers and footers that are aligned to the outside edge, which are more common than centered headers, footers, and page numbers), but we'll push it further up at the top and further down at the bottom, to within a few pixels of the edges. We'll also screen it back to a light grey instead of black.

I'm not quite sure when this will happen, but when it does, Gary will mention it here. You'll all be able to repersonalize any PDFs you already own to get the new style of watermark.

-Vic.
.

The new, less-intrusive watermark, as described above, is now in place. If you'd like to apply it to PDFs you've already purchased, just repersonalize and redownload them. And let us know what you think.

-Vic.
.


Much better, and much less intrusive. Still not as good as DriveThruRPG, who uses black text with a white outline such that it looks grey on screen and only puts name and order number once in the bottom-left of each page, or RPGNow who doesn't use any, but at least it doesn't obscure my page text any more.

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