Hi, this is Gary with MacMost.com.
On this episode let me show you how you can sign documents in Preview, and even in Mail,
without having to print them out first.
You can use Preview to sign documents without having to actually print them out first.
So you may have a PDF document, say a form from somebody that was sent to you by email
or you download off the internet and you need to sign it and send it back.
In this case I've just created a letter in Pages and the letter has a spot here for my
signature at the bottom.
I'm going to use that as an example.
It is more common though that you're signing a form.
So what do you do.
Well, in Preview you've got, under Tools, Annotate.
At the bottom you've got Signatures and I have no signatures recorded here.
I only have Manage Signatures as my only option.
I can get to the same place by clicking on the Tools button.
Then I see all these tools here.
There's the signature tool.
I can click here and this takes me to the same place I would have gotten to the other
way.
Now I can add a signature one of two ways.
Either using the Trackpad and I've got a Trackpad hooked up to my Mac and, of course, all MacBooks
do.
Or use the camera to take a picture of my signature as I've written it on a piece of
paper.
So let's start with the Trackpad method.
I'm going to click here to begin.
Now it's important to realize my Trackpad now is kind of like a piece of paper with
my finger as the pen.
So instead of actually dragging a cursor and clicking down to draw anywhere I touch is
actually going to put a mark.
So I'm going to actually swipe twice to create an X like that.
Now I can press any key to finish.
I'll press the spacebar.
You get the option here to Clear, Cancel, or hit Done and it will record the signature.
Now you can see the same menu here actually comes up with this signature.
I can create another one very easily, create signature, click to begin, X, and Done.
Now I've got two in there.
So it is very easy to have two signatures say maybe one with your middle name and one
without.
Or you and your spouse for instance.
Or a signature and your initials because sometimes you need to initial documents.
The other way to do this is to create a signature using the camera.
So what you want to do when you are using the camera is that you want to write your
name in nice thick black ink really large, much larger than you normally do, on a piece
of paper.
It should take up most of the piece of paper because you are going to use your camera and
you want it to be as good a resolution as possible.
So I'm going to hold the paper in front of the camera, I'm going to click camera here,
and you can see it's going to try and focus on it.
There you go, it captures it.
So you want to try and put it right above that line there and then you hit Done and
now you've got it there.
You can do the same thing with a set of initials.
There you go and it gets it.
So now you have both of those in there and I can use them in documents.
So how do I use them.
Well, I want to put the signature right here.
I'm going to go in here.
Instead of going down to Create Signature at the bottom I'm simply going to select the
signature.
When I do it's just put right in the middle of the document there.
I can grab it and move it where I want.
I can grab a corner and I can adjust its size.
Put it just where I want and now it's part of the document.
Now I can print this out or I can simply just save it and then go ahead and email it.
So now that I've saved it if I were to reopen the document you can see the signature is
there.
It is part of the PDF now.
So if I would return this to somebody it has my signature in there.
It is basically indistinguishable from if I were to print it out, sign it, and then
scan it back in which is the way we would most likely have done it before having this
functionality in software.
It is much easier to do it this way and it is much quicker.
It is legal as long as you are the one doing it.
So you have the right to be able to sign your name the way you want in most cases.
Managing signatures is pretty easy because all you need to do is turn Tools on and then
instead of selecting one that you are going to use in a signature you just hit the x button
here and it will get rid of that one.
Now most of the functionality you get in Preview you also get in Mail now with El Capitan.
So, for instance, say I'm sending an email to somebody and I want to attach a document
to them that I need to sign.
So I'm going to a certificate, it's a PDF, and it needs my signature here.
So I can click on the little markup button here, go to Markup and now I can mark this
up adding annotations and also signatures.
So, I can add my signature right here, I'm still in Mail, put my signature down here,
hit Done.
You can see the PDF that I'm sending now is going to have my signature on it.
So I can do this and it would just be this copy of it here that has my signature.
If I were to go back to the original here that's in the Finder, the one I attached,
you can see the signature is not in there.
So it's a good way to sign something but leave the original PDF intact and just send your
signed copy off to somebody.