How to overlay text on Adobe Acrobat pdf file?

Question

I have an Adobe Acrobat PDF file on Macintosh OS X Lion that I need to overlay some plain text on top of at a particular position relative to the original PDF. Previously I have created a Microsoft Word document that contains the positioned text and printed the page twice, once for the original PDF and a second time for the Microsoft Word document to get the overlay. This is rather cumbersome and there is some slop sending the paper through the printer two times such that the text is not exactly aligned between the two print outs.Instead I would like to create a new PDF (or perhaps some other format file) that combines the original PDF together with the positioned text I want to overlay such as in a Microsoft Word document. The overlay should be transparent and not obscure anything from the original PDF, just like the effect of my manual double printing on the same sheet of paper.I have access to Adobe Acrobat Pro X as well as other Adobe tools such as illustrator and wonder if one of these tools or another Adobe tool provides the needed ability or must I go outside the Adobe family of tools to accomplish this?

Answer 1

In this situation, you could open the pdf file in Adobe Illustrator, Then, at the menu bar at top, select File > Export > Export As > PNG. (To find the PNG option, click on the small down-arrow button at the lower right side of the bar displaying the file format. PNG will be listed with several other formats.) Then open a new Illustrator file. Select File > Place. (select the PNG image file you just created via Export. PNG files will keep the transparency from the original PDF). After you've placed the PNG file, use Illustrator's text tool to position the text accordingly. For saving the file, you could choose the native .ai format or, if you wish it to be viewed with other programs, save the file as a new PDF.