Then it’s a bit tricky to hold it up in the right spot, but if you peek around the side, you can get it in just the right place (the blue line is from Preview for alignment):įortunately when I held it still, I got a good scan, though it’s still showing the live Webcam view at this point too, so the signature is superimposed, which is a bit weird: I suggest a black felt marker if you have one to create a high contrast sample. You will need to grab a piece of blank paper and write your signature big and bold. Instead, a click on “Camera” and we can try using the built-in Webcam on the Mac to create a signature! Now you might be great using your finger on the trackpad to create a signature, but even after a couple of tries, mine is, uhhh, not great: Once you get there, you’ll see the two options, Trackpad and Camera: A perfect use for the signature capability of Preview!Įasiest way to get to the signature management area is off the “Tools” menu:Īs you can see, it’s Tools > Annotate > Signature > Manage Signatures… To start, here’s a typical digital document, an IRS Form W-9, as viewed in Preview:Īs you can see, it has a space where you’re supposed to sign. There are basically two ways you can enter the signature too: either use your finger to sign on your trackpad, or sign on a blank piece of white paper and use the webcam to scan it in. Scanning in and saving a really good example of your signature can be more than a bit tricky, however, as I’ll demonstrate. There are a lot of review and annotation tools and, yes, there’s the ability to have a digital version of your signature, which makes it much easier to “sign” documents sent by other parties in digital format without having to print, sign, scan.
The PDF Preview program included with Mac OS X does indeed have quite a variety of different capabilities and features that make it a lot more useful than just to view PDF documents.