GregLedet.net Adventures in networking, security, and other things

Very helpful. The clearest, simplest instructions I’ve found yet. I used the TIFF editing in Word with no problem. Thanks.

Friday I was searching for Blogs related to email topics but more specifically to email signature format. I found your blog and find it intersting.

Tried using the “place image” option using Acrobat pro and pngs… It works so well. Thanks for all these wonderful “alternate” tips and very clear instructions!!

I wonder if there is a way of doing this in old Acrobat 5.0 – do not want to pay for an upgrade. It looks like it converts transparent gif into a non-transparent jpeg and stamp comes out all black. Any suggestions or workarounds would be appreciated.

Thank you, Greg!
Simple and efficient way to produce a stamp with a clear background. You are a genius!
The only thing that .gif format gives the stamp of enormous size and very difficult to size it down and Photoshop .pdf format much heavier.

With big respect,

Leonid.

Thanks a lot!
This was very easy and helpful. I was trying to figure out an electronic signature in adobe, but it was a little difficult.

This was simple and fast! Thanks!!

Sarah

my gif has transparent areas but those areas are not transparent on import to adobe acrobat.

Excellent ! Superb ! THE hot tamale ! My hats off ( yes – I do wear many hats ) to you Senor.
Now then – what's the big deal one may think in your procedures demonstrating the use of transparency as stamps or placed images etc ? Well to begin with its useful – so useful that it simply has not alternative. Next the functionality that it opens up (thanks to you) (oh I love the MS-Word – transparency – PDFexport proc – that's a habanero salsa made from cherry tomatoes ! Now I do wonder if Openoffice writer has that feature hmmm ) makes the workflow of the day elegant – that is what it is all about – Work flow. Finally I really have no idea who the neanderthal boneheads who run the Program Management office Adobe Acrobat are but they simply do not seem to understand – “make features easily accessible” – Imagine them trying to eat chips and salsa – um well actually trying to hunt out the chips from pile of wood shavings and the salsa .. well I shall desist.

It is the lore of such good Samaritans that keeps the hope going. OH BTW – I made a transparent layer in Photoshop – imported my scanned signature – used magic wand to pick up the signature as a selection – dropped it on the transparent new layer in a nice inky blue – killed the scanned layer – deselected – saved the psd file – and saved the image as a png image ( no interlace ) and imported the signature as a rightclick of the touch up object tool and sized the bounding box so the signature was just perfect – and that was just that.

Good Luck every body – nope I am not a Mexican – just call me Mr Churro riding a Burro.

After searching forever, you have saved me. Thank you so much!!!! I'm passing this on to my colleagues as its the only fix I've found for the background issue. THANK YOU!!!

2/9/11

Thank you! This was most informative, and the MS Word method was especially useful (since I do not know how to operate PhotoShop).

I was actually able to use the MS Word method with both a color and a B&W signature — however, the B&W worked much better in terms of how much ‘edging’ there was around the lines of the signature itself.

The color signature, while largely transparent in background, evidenced a border of white around the signature lines whereas the B&W signature did not.

Kudos, and many thanks again! . . . BH

Thank you for the tip on the GIF format.  I wasn’t able to get it to work through Word, but I was able to get it to work going through Powerpoint 2010 and using the transparency tool in Powerpoint and saving the signature as a GIF.  Don’t know why it didn’t work for me through Word, but the GIF format was a saver — many thanks!

I was really hoping this would work because I have searched all over for a way to get rid of that pesky background. I used your directions using Word; “An Easier Way: Good for Most Customers” and after “Adding the Stamp to Acrobat”. I tried it three times in the exact way it was written, but it didn’t work. My signature went onto the pdf at first looking pixelated in black and white and the second and third time, it didn’t pixelate, but it also was not transparent, even though it was transparent in the Word document (actually it was never transparent in Word, only in Powerpoint).

I am using Word 2010 and Adobe Acrobat X, so maybe it’s a slightly different procedure? If anyone has tips to create a signature with transparent background for these programs, I’d greatly appreciate it!

The PNG file format should work as well as a GIF file format for a transparent background. I’ve been using this method of digitally signing documents for the last 6 years in Acrobat.

You write your name legibly several times on a sheet of plain white paper and then scan it as a picture (save as PNG format) at 256 greyscale setting and 300dpi resolution for best results.

Open the file you saved in Windows Paint or similar graphics editing tool (I use the free Paint.NET) and pick the best looking of your signatures and select a rectangle just surrounding your signature. Then select “crop to selection” so all that’s left is your signature. Then using the “magic wand” tool click anywhere on the white space surrounding your signature and hit the “Delete” key to erase everything that you’ve selected (the white space). Do this again for any areas that had white space enclosed by your signature lettering (like the letter “O” or “P” or “D” where your previous selection missed) until you have nothing left but your black signature on a transparent background. 

Then just follow the rest of the procedures to add that as either a “Custom Stamp” in acrobat or create a digital signature when you use your company card or CAC card to sign documents.

Thanks the Adobe Acrobat tip worked great!

I spent recently almost half a day trying to include a transparent image with no success.

Very, very clear and effective. Many thanks for it!

2-Xite

Thanks, this worked really well for me.

Cat Grace…how do you convert that image created in word into a PDF that is transparent.  If I copy and paste the image it is transparent but when I convert the image to a PDF it is no longer transparent.  I can do it on my old XP computer using Microsoft document imaging and word but can’t make in work in W7.

This method was both easy and fast.  I did need to look up how to access the magic wand, having not had much experience with Photoshop before today, but that took about 25 seconds (it’s under the Quick Selection Tool in CS4).  Thanks a ton.

It took me a while to figure it out, but I finally got it!  Thanks a lot.