When You Need a Wet Signature
Sometimes agencies/corporations/institutions want a “wet” signature on a piece of paper. If you can get away with the low resolution Mac Preview version, good for you! Can’t? Just print, sign, scan send. But no printer? Don’t speak the local language? Feeling cheap? Have to get a document done at 2am? Here’s how I did it.
Add High Resolution Signature to PDF Using Preview
- Sign a piece of paper
- Take a photo of your Nicholas and Stephanie Signatures|signature
- Use adobe express to remove the background https://new.express.adobe.com/tools/remove-background#
- Open in signature in Preview, reduce image size to 500 width 300 dpi.
- Add images to existing PDF with Preview
Do as follows:
- Open the image you want to paste in Preview.app
- Select All (Command-A)
- Copy (Command-C)
- Paste (Command-V)
Now you have a copy of your image pasted above your old image. This is apparently meaningless, but the new copy is not just an image, but an object.
- Click on the new image (round blue corners appear, no marching ants)
- Copy (Command-C)
- Paste on your PDF document. The image is an object, moveable and resizable. The original PDF is still a PDF, editable and all.
Note There is the extra, non-obvious step of “pasting” the source image into the source image file before you can paste it into the target file.
Make It Look Scanned
If you want to make it look scanned, you can use command line tools.
brew install imagemagick popplerconvert -density 130 input.pdf -colorspace Gray ouput.pdfThere are options to make it even more authentic, but I ended up with very heavy pdf files. i.e. Super PDF Scan Code
Automate It
Finally, if you need to do this frequently, automate it. https://bradt.ca/blog/how-to-make-a-pdf-look-scanned-imagemagick-automator-macos/