Digitally sign your documents with Preview

No matter how ‘green’ we all try and go in our last attempts to save the trees, there is always some or other printing that ends up being done. Never mind Bob down the hall that insists on printing every single email and filing it in a binder from the 90’s.

I find these days that the only printing that I ever do, is when I get those lovely little emails titled: “Please sign and return”.

Just to get your little signature onto that document, you have to print it out, sign, scan, email back and destroy the printed paper. Such a waste!

But thank goodness, OS X’s built in app, Preview, allows you to digitally sign your documents. And it is so incredibly easy to setup and to use.

Let’s do it.

Start by getting Preview open.

Either open a PDF document, or simply open the app in your Applications folder.

Open the Preferences for Preview.

Switch to the Signatures tab.

At this time, grab a piece of scribble-paper and add your signature to it. (Yes, I see the irony in this)

Once you’ve got it on paper, click on the “Create Signature” link.

This will start up your Mac’s camera, and ask you to hold up the signature for the camera to capture it.

Once it grabs it successfully, on the blue line, it will give you a preview.

The more still you can keep it, the more clear the signature becomes.

Select Accept, and you’re done.

Now to use the signature, is just as easy.

Once you are in a PDF that needs signing, show the Editing Toolbar, from the View menu.

Select the Signature icon (squiggly ‘s’ icon).

Now simply drag a square where you want your signature to appear, and hey presto!

You can drag it bigger and smaller once you’ve laid it out on the page.

On my production machine, I created 2 separate signatures. Not for my multiple personalities, but one for a full signature, and one for initialing individual pages for those nice boring long documents.