Creating a scanned digital signature.

• Author: Kepczyk, Roman H.
• Position: TECHNOLOGY UPDATE

Ever wonder how to put a scanned image of a signature into 3 digital form so that it can be input onto an online form and sent immediately, instead of having to print out the form, physically sign it and then scan it back in? The traditional manual process takes time and costs more in resources since we often end up either shredding the manually signed document, or worse, filing it in a another paper folder and storing it in a physical filing system for another decade. With the profession's push towards "less paper" technologies, the efficiency gained by inserting a scanned digital signature is a relatively easy solution for firms to use, especially since most of us already have all the tools we would need. This would include a pen, paper, computer with scanning software and a scanner that can scan to TIFF or JPEG files.

The first step is getting a good signature of your individual or firm name. It is best to use a blank piece of paper and lay it on a lined page so that the signature is straight. Use a very fine tip marker or gel tip pen so the ink color and width are consistent and try signing larger than usual so the image can be shrunk down and appear very concise. Next, scan the image in at a high resolution, at least 600 dpi (dots per inch), and save it in a TIFF or JPEG format so it can be worked with as an image. Open the image on your computer with a tool like Adobe Acrobat, Photoshop or PaperPort and use the "crop" image tool to outline just the signature so it cuts the signature from the page down to a usable size. If your software has the capability, you will then want to save it with a transparent background so that it can be input onto any color of form (otherwise the background will be fixed as the color of the paper you originally signed). This image can then be inserted into most documents and saved as a...