Add Watermarks With VMware Integrated Printing on Linux Desktops

With VMware Integrated Printing, you can add a watermark to jobs printed from a remote Linux session. You can customize the text content and format of the watermark using advanced print options.

Prerequisites

To enable the VMware Integrated Printing watermark feature, you must perform the following prerequisite tasks.

In the /etc/vmware/config file, set the printSvc.watermarkEnabled configuration option to true. See Edit Configuration Files on a Linux Desktop.
Install the QPDF package on the agent machine, as described in the following procedures.

Install QPDF on a RHEL 9.x or Rocky Linux 9.x Machine

Enable the Extra Packages for Enterprise Linux (EPEL).

yum -y install https://dl.fedoraproject.org/pub/epel/epelrelease-latest-9.noarch.rpm

Enable the CodeReady Linux Builder (CRB) repository.
```
/usr/bin/crb enable
```
Install the QPDF package.
```
dnf install qpdf
```

Install QPDF on a RHEL 8.x Machine

Install and enable gcc-toolset.

yum install -y gcc-toolset-12
scl enable gcc-toolset-12 bash

Install the zlib-devel and libjpeg-turbo-devel packages.
```
yum install -y zlib-devel libjpeg-turbo-devel
```

Download and build the QPDF package.

wget https://github.com/qpdf/qpdf/releases/download/release-qpdf-10.3.1/qpdf-10.3.1.tar.gz
tar -zxvf qpdf-10.3.1.tar.gz
cd qpdf-10.3.1
./configure
make
make install

Install QPDF on a CentOS 7.9 Machine

Enable the Red Hat Software Collections (RHSCL).

yum-config-manager --enable rhel-workstation-rhscl-7-rpms

Install and enable the Red Hat Developer Toolset.

yum install devtoolset-7
scl enable devtoolset-7 bash

Install the zlib-devel and libjpeg-turbo-devel packages.
```
yum install -y zlib-devel libjpeg-turbo-devel
```

Download and build the QPDF package.

wget https://github.com/qpdf/qpdf/releases/download/release-qpdf-10.3.1/qpdf-10.3.1.tar.gz
tar -zxvf qpdf-10.3.1.tar.gz
cd qpdf-10.3.1
./configure
make
make install

Install QPDF on an Ubuntu/Debian Machine

Run the command to install the QPDF package.
```
apt install qpdf
```

Configure the Printed Watermark Settings

You can use print options to specify the content and format of the watermark.

Note: The watermark is always printed in a repeating pattern on lines parallel to the diagonal of the page.

Open the print dialog box for the job you want to print.
Select the Advanced tab.

Configure the watermark options as described in the following table.


Option	Allowed Values	Description
Watermark Text	Unicode text characters	Text content of the printed watermark.
Watermark Location	Overlay, Underlay	Placement of the watermark in relation to the page content. Overlay places the watermark in front of the printed page content. Underlay places the watermark behind the printed page content.
Watermark Density	Low, Medium, High	The density level, or number of rows used to print the watermark. Low repeats the watermark in a single row along the diagonal of the page. Medium repeats the watermark in several rows parallel to the diagonal of the page. High repeats the watermark in many rows parallel to the diagonal of the page.
Watermark Page Ranges	All Pages, First Page, or a custom page range	The pages on which to include the watermark. To specify a custom page range, use commas to separate non-consecutive pages and hyphens to indicate a consecutive range. For example: "1,3,4-5,99-200"
Watermark Color	Blue, Gray, Red, or a custom color specified as arithmetic RGB values	The color of the watermark. To specify a custom color, use the format `<R value>-<G value>-<B value>`, where the values represent the intensities of the red, green, and blue components of the color. Each value can range from 0.0 (lowest intensity) to 1.0 (highest intensity). For example: "0.31-0.42-0.55"
Watermark Font Style	Normal, Italic, Oblique	The typeface style, or slope, of the watermark.
Watermark Font Weight	Thin,Ultralight, Light, Semilight, Book, Medium, Semibold, Bold, Ultrabold, Heavy, Ultraheavy	The stroke weight, or thickness, of the watermark font. The effect of each weight value depends on the font selected.
Watermark Font	Any system-supported font	The typeface used to print the watermark.
Watermark Font Size	An integer from 6 through 96	The size, in points, of the watermark font. If the specified size exceeds the printed page dimensions, VMware Integrated Printing automatically adjusts to the nearest point value that can fit the watermark on the page.