FYI for anyone on a Mac: The Preview App has a feature to sign any PDF or image using your trackpad.
I held my pointer finger between my thumb and middle finger, and made myself really think of it as a pencil. I looked down at the trackpad as I wrote (rather than at the screen), and tried to visualize the trail it would leave on the surface.
Instead of simply saving the signed PDF in preview and sending it out, export the PDF as another PDF (there’s an option to do that in the File dropdown).
I’ve found that doing that fixes all comparability issues (based on signing 5-10 docs a week).
Edit: Before someone tells me I should be using Acrobat, I know, but for some reason it runs painful slow on the new Apple M1’s.
I would call that Apple bashing nonsense.
Mac, Windows, Linux, BSD ... if you're going to go signing legal documents (a) with a self-signed certificate (b) without an independently traceable timestamp .... then frankly don't expect it to hold up for long in a law court.
That said, most of the times I need a signature is some bureaucratic useless form and the signature is just a pro-forma - and you can be sure if I don't have a signature (and maybe if I didn't pass my form through a filter to make it look like it was scanned) some government employee in some office will reject my form and I'll have to do another one and fork out even more money.
And the signatures we're taking about are an image of a signature, not a cryptographic one.
Also, I don't know about you, but AFAIK pretty much all software these days (whether closed-source or open) comes with a great big disclaimer attached effectively saying "you're on your own" if the software functions in an unexpected manner.
I've found sometimes that Preview mangles some PDFs created in Adobe. In addition, there are many cases FoxIT (PhantomePDF) also mangles or can't even open PDFs that are *complex in nature that were created in Adobe Pro.
To be fair, I just signed some bank documents, and it was all inside their system and it just consisted of me checking a checkbox. It was their system, so it was considered a signature, since I logged into their system first.
Once you get into power usage, such as redaction in the legal world, Adobe is the only product that doesn't have bugs. I've tried. It's a sad state of affairs, but yeah that's the world.
*And by complex, I mean 1GB pdfs with 1000s in pages that have Adobe's embedded audio/video as well as scanned handwritten notes and photos., not 1 or 2 simple pages.
In small transactions (say, less than $100), no-one really cared - I would scribble my signature on a docket, no-one would double-check it with my card, everyone went on their way. Signatures were required but not respected or checked. In large transactions (I bought a MacBook, for example), the staff could not care less about my card or the signature scrawled on the back, but they would only take my money after I could produce some photo ID (a passport in my case) showing that the name on the card correlated to my face. In this case signatures were technically required but totally ignored because they’re easily forgeable. (A fact I’ve always been bemused by is that the signature is on the card - if you drop your card or something the signature is right there).
End of long story - how valid are “just signatures” legally? As someone with zero legal experience (clearly qualified to comment) I feel like other evidence showing that someone received and signed the document would be much more valid than just “the signature” by itself.
Such certificate is useful for PDF signing besides other uses.
They call it "Continuity Camera", and it is probably my single favorite little feature in the Apple ecosystem. Nothing revolutionary, but just something simple done really well - and when you need it, you really need it.