How Can I Sign a PDF on a Mac?

Recently, I was asked to sign a document. No big deal right? Well, it was a scanned copy of a document that was emailed to me. How in the world was I to sign a digital copy of a document and then send it back? I could've printed it out, signed it, scanned it back in and sent it back, but that's an awful lot of work... and I didn't have a printer or scanner handy. Thankfully, Mac OS X comes with Preview, the system's default PDF viewer.

Preview is sometimes overlooked, and some people don't even realize they're using it, but it can quite handily manage PDFs and other files like photos. Should you find yourself in a situation like mine where you need to add your signature to a PDF, here are the steps:

1. Open Preview. (Duh.)
2. Click on Preview > Preferences on the menu bar in the top left corner of the screen.
3. Click on "Signatures" on the window that opens up.
4. Click the plus (+) button in the bottom left corner of the window.
5. Hold up a white piece of paper with your signature on it, making sure the bottom of your signature aligns with the blue line overlaid on the camera picture shown.
6. Your signature is now saved!

To use your new signature, go to Tools > Annotate > Signature from the menu bar. (Again, the menu bar is the collection of drop down lists in the top left corner of your Macs screen.)

Practical Tip of the Day:
Preview gives you several other ways to make notes on (AKA "annotate") your PDFs. You can highlight text, underline it, strike-through text, add shapes, text, lines and many other things. Next time you're sent a PDF and you want to make changes to it, open up the Tools menu option and see what things you can do.