(If I’ve already lost you, the rest of this tutorial probably isn’t for you, unless you’re keen for a lot of learning.) For this we need tools.įirst, open a Terminal window. Now that we have a PDF all filled in and signed, we need to scanify it, make it look like it was scanned. (That is not my real signature.) Installing ImageMagick via HomeBrew

Now you can click on the Sign button again, click your signature, and it will be added to the PDF for you to drag into place. Once you have your signature added to Preview app, it’s there until you remove it. For best results, I recommend using the Camera option, where you hold up a piece of paper with your signature on it to your camera. I found a big difference between my signature made these ways vs one made with a pen and paper. I tried signing using the trackpad and iPad options but found the results pretty disappointing. You are then prompted to add your signature: To add a signature, click the Sign button: To add text to the PDF, click the text button:Įdit the text and then drag it to where you want it placed: In Preview app, click the Show Markup Toolbar button: If you’d like a copy of the PDF I’m using here, you can download a copy. If Adobe Acrobat has taken over as your default PDF app, you’ll need to right-click, go to Open With, and select Preview.app from the list: Preview is an app that’s included with macOS and is great for filling out PDFs and adding signatures.

Adding a Signature to a PDF using Preview app in macOS This is the perfect example of a situation where desktop software is better than cloud-based software. Identity theft a legitimate concern these days and I certainly don’t want to share my PDFs with these faceless online tools. But can you trust them? Does your PDF contain banking information, medical details, or other sensitive information that you definitely wouldn’t want to share with just anyone? If you search for “make pdf look scanned” you’ll notice that all the top results are online tools that invite you to upload your PDF and promise to spit out a roughed up PDF that looks scanned. I’ve come up with a DIY solution using free tools to do exactly this.

Ideally I could add an image of my signature to a PDF and then run it through some kind of “scanify” processing to rough it up a bit and make it look scanned. Is someone asking you for a “wet signature” and yet they still want you to scan the document and email it to them? Are they asking you to print-sign-scan-email a document? What a waste of ink, paper, and most importantly, time! Ideally we could do this all digitally.

Homebrew install imagemagick