Watermark or redaction — different jobs
These two are routinely confused, and the confusion is expensive when it happens in a document that goes to the other side.
What a watermark does
A watermark draws text onto the page: DRAFT, WITHOUT PREJUDICE, CONFIDENTIAL, EXHIBIT AB3. It removes ambiguity about the status of a copy — that an offer was made on a without-prejudice basis, that the version circulating by email is a draft. That is a communication job, and it is worth doing properly: the right size, angle and opacity so it reads as a label rather than a stain.
What it does not do is change what can be read. The text underneath is still there, still selectable, still copyable, and trivially removed by anyone with a PDF editor.
What redaction actually requires
Real redaction removes the content: the text is deleted from the file, not covered up. Drawing a black box over a paragraph leaves the paragraph in the file, and the standard embarrassing failures — metadata, hidden layers, text under a rectangle — all come from treating a visual fix as a removal.
Slate does not do redaction, and it does not offer a black-box tool that could be mistaken for it. Redaction belongs in a proper PDF editor where the removal can be verified, and it is worth doing on the original rather than on a copy that has been passed around.
The safe division of labour
Redact first, in a tool that genuinely removes content, then watermark the redacted result if the copy needs a status label. Doing it in the other order — watermark the working copy, redact later — is how unredacted versions end up in circulation, because the watermark makes a document feel finished when it is not.
Can I remove a watermark later?+
Not with Slate, and you should assume anyone else can. Treat a watermark as a label, never as protection.
Does Slate redact documents?+
No. There is no redaction tool, deliberately: a black rectangle that leaves the underlying text intact is worse than no tool at all.
Which phrases can I stamp?+
WITHOUT PREJUDICE, DRAFT, CONFIDENTIAL and EXHIBIT are presets, and any text up to 60 characters can be typed in.
Files are processed in the browser tab and are never uploaded. Slate is not legal advice or a case management system.