Earlier this week, I was helping a friend of mine write his resume and cover letter for some jobs he was applying to. We were using my Mac, but he’s a native PC user and seemed somewhat aloof while typing. I blamed it on the fact that he was being forced to write and felt a little resistant to the “Mac lifestyle.”
When the time came to slap a signature on his cover letter, he jokingly asked if I had a digital signing pad. I laughed and said no, though as I am writing this, I realized that I probably could have used my Wacom tablet… Because he is a PC user, I love telling him about all the small neat features that Macs have built-in. I told him that Preview could digitize his signature using the iSight camera. (His demeanor said, not impressed but I could tell he was jealous.)
If you would like to digitally sign documents without having to print them (and you don’t own a tablet), sign and scan it. (I should note that I am using a MacBook Pro that has a built-in iSight camera and I am running OS X Mountain Lion (10.8). This should work on any Mac that has a built-in iSight camera running 10.7 or newer. Upgrade to 10.8 here!)
Then, follow these steps: Grab a pen and blank sheet of blank white (non-lined) paper and fill that thing up with signatures. Sign each one the way you normally would; there is no need to make them huge, though — just leave adequate space in between them.
Next, open up your doc in your preferred document editing app (mine is Pages). Go forward as if you want to print, but instead of hitting the Print button, click the PDF button at the bottom left of the print window. Then click Save as PDF from the drop down menu. Save it wherever you will be able to find it later and you’re all set.
Once we have a PDF version of the document, navigate to it and open it up in Preview. If your PDFs open up in a different app, then you can read this Mac Treat #199 article about launching files in different apps.
With Preview open, click on this icon 
to drop down some editing tools. Now click on the signature icon 
and click the option to Create Signature from Built-in iSight… This will bring up a new window and activate your iSight camera. Simply hold your favorite iteration of all the signatures you wrote so that the base of the signature lines up with the blue line. Hold still for a second, and a digitized preview of your signature will appear to the right. If you’re happy with it, hit accept and then draw it on your doc. Once it is drawn on, you can resize and relocate it to where you want.
Now you are all set to give your documents that personal touch with a signature. If you have any questions or comments, I always welcome them. Send them to michaelb@smalldog.com.