The Easy Way to Sign PDF Files & Forms Without Printing Them

One of my all-time favorite PDF tricks enables you to sign your PDF files without having to print them out first.

Cast your mind back and see if the following sounds familiar: You’ve received a form or document (as a PDF) that you must sign, but you can’t write on your computer screen. This leaves you with a number of ridiculous choices, like:

Print the PDF, sign it, scan it back to PDF, and then email to sender, or
Print the PDF, sign it, fax it back to the sender, or
Print the PDF, sign it, and then mail it back to the sender.

The trick I’m going to show you using Nitro Pro will let you sign any PDF you receive with a couple of clicks (assuming the file is not secured). To start with, you’ll need a scanner to get your signature into electronic form, but once that’s done all you’ll need is Nitro Pro to do the signing.

Note: An important thing to know before we begin is that this trick is very different to inserting a real ‘digital signature.’ The digital signatures you can use with PDF files with Nitro PDF Professional and Adobe Acrobat are there to show not just a visual representation of your hand written signature, but to protect the integrity of a document and make it tamper proof. See our secure and sign PDF files feature info for more.

Here’s a screenshot to give you a quick visual idea of what we’re going to achieve. In it you can see me selecting my signature stamp annotation (see our annotate PDF page for related feature info), and also the signature stamp applied to a page in my PDF.

Signature stamp annotation for signing PDF files

Setting up your signature

The first task is to get a copy of your handwritten signature onto your computer.

On a piece of white paper, sign your name.
Open Nitro PDF Professional.
On the Home tab, in the Convert group, click the arrow below Create PDF .
Click Create PDF From Scanner .
Choose your settings, and then click Scan.
Your signature should now be in PDF form and ready to crop to size.
On the Insert and Edit tab, in the Pages group, click Crop.
Drag around your signature and crop it so your signature has very little whitespace around it.
Double-click on the highlighted area, and then click Crop.
Save and name your signature.

Setting up a signature stamp annotation

This task takes the PDF file containing your signature and turns it into a stamp annotation.

Open Nitro Pro.
On the Review tab, in the Comment group, click the arrow below Stamp.
Click Create New Stamp.
Browse to and select your newly created PDF with your signature, and then click Save.

Adding your signature to a PDF

Now that you’re set up, it’s just a matter of ’stamping’ your signature onto the page wherever and whenever you like.

Open Nitro Pro.
On the Review tab, in the Comment group, click the arrow below Stamp.
Select your signature stamp.
On the page to sign, click and drag the stamp to the correct size. Click on it to drag it to the correct position.
That’s it, you’re done. Save the file and email it to the sender.

This trick relates quite closely to another tip I’ll cover soon: how to fill in forms in PDF files by inserting text.

Stay tuned.

This entry was written by Richard Crocker and posted on March 6, 2008 at 1:09 pm and filed under knowledge, tips. Bookmark the permalink. Follow any comments here with the RSS feed for this post. Post a comment or leave a trackback: Trackback URL.

David Kempe

Richard:

I followed your procedure for creating a stamp, but the final product is a WHITE rectangle, even though the scanned signature is BLACK.

What am i doing wrong?

richardcrocker1

David, are you able to convert the image to PDF OK? If you do that, does the signature display fine when you open it in Nitro Pro?

David Kempe

Richard:

Yes, and yes.

The PDF copy of my signature displayed fine, first in blue, then in black.

I even made sure the color was BLACK when I saved it as "Signature Stamp".

Then when I accessed the stamp file, it was a WHITE rectangle; no signature at all.

David Kempe

Bob McIntyre

This procedure works fine, except many places don't accept this type of signature because it looks like it was done digitally.

The trick is to make the background transparent so that the signature appears as if it were written on the page.

How can I get a transparent background instead of a white one?

richardcrocker1

Bob, we're working on adding support for transparent stamps and signatures. In the meantime, if you can crop very closely around the signature image, that will hopefully allow you to place the signature on the page without it being placed over any lines.

Bob McIntyre

Thanks, but I've tried that. It looks weird if the "y" in my last name does not cross the signature line as should all letters with decenders (g, f, z, etc.)

John LeBlanc

Yes this would be wonderful! I never figured out an easy way to do this with Acrobat.

I already have a scanned sig. as a .jpeg that I insert into Word docs. Can I import that jpeg into a pdf form? I don't have easy access to a scanner.

richardcrocker1

Johh, yes, you can turn your JPEG sig into a stamp annotation which you can reuse over and over in Nitro Pro. Just follow the steps in the "Setting up a signature stamp annotation" section above.

John LeBlanc

Worked perfectly! Thanks for the speedy and excellent support; it's so refreshing to find software and people who provide personal support like we used to have routinely in the 80s & 90s. I'm very impressed with Nitro Pro. The other blog topics are very useful. I finally have learned to do digital signatures and your trick of capturing screens, annotating and email them is excellent.

btw, I agree with the previous post about making the background transparent so that the signature can go over top of lines and presumably be printed on paper other than white.

richardcrocker1

Thanks for your feedback John. Support for transparent images is on our to-do list and will come in an upcoming release.

Charley

I did it from the File option instead of the Scanner option. But when I click on the Insert & Edit option, the Crop option is greyed out, alongwith all the options there.

Why is that ?

Please help

chrisdahl

Usually that is because there is security on the PDF that doesn't allow modifications. We respect security settings by disabling tools on the ribbons accordingly.

charleychacko

I tried this using the file option instead of scanner option. But the "pages" in "Insert & Edit" is greyed out.

Please help

kerokura

Somehow I can move my signature around even after I save it as some other file...
Is there any way that I can lock it so after I send it to another person by mail they wouldn't be able to touch it?

chrisdahl

Sure. You can 'flatten' the annotation.
1. Go to the Forms ribbon.
2. Open the Console.
3. Type the following into the console and click Execute.

this.flattenPages();

That will flatten the annotation and make it a part of the page content.

kerokura

Where can I find the open console menu? I cannot find it under "forms" thanks in advance!

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