Comment by tombert

Just a couple months ago I had a couple of forms rejected with a note “needs wet signature”

They were for a 401(k) plan I was updating RMD choices. I got the PDF form from their site, filled it out in Preview, pasted my signature PNG, and used an app on my phone to fax it(!) to their number.

Got rejected. Had to actually print the damn things and sign them with a pen, scan them again with my phone’s camera, and re-fax them.

Was mildly infuriating.

I should probably do that. I've always hesitated because the paranoid part of me thinks they'll catch on to it being digital if I have to sign in ten different places and they see that the signature is literally identical for each one. My Krita solution, while annoying, allows for me to have a slightly different signature for each one, for each form I sign, allowing it to pass all but the most judicious level of forensics.

Granted, no one is going CSI on anything I sign. I should probably just make like ten pngs of my signature and paste those in.

When we were buying a house back in 2009 (before electronic document signatures, which are the most amazing thing ever compared with the old way) we had to sign zillions of different pieces of paperwork going back and forth while making offers and so on. I was doing most of this during the day from the office, and all the paperwork had to be signed by both me and my wife.

So what I'd do was take the PDF, paste in my wife's signature, print it out, sign it myself, then fax it over. Never had any problems.

It depends on what you're signing. My letters of authorization to my bank require a "wet signature." Scanned or photographed and emailed is fine, but they want you to print and sign, and they've sent it back to me when they can tell I've used a digital stamp.

This product looks interesting, although the idea of me entering coordinates for the stamp instead of just stamping it in a GUI is not at all appealing...

I did my refi using that method till they realized i was using a digitized copy and sent over a person to collect wet signatures from me.

This, but with extra noise around the signature and with at least 4 unique copies, max number of times one has to sign full name a document (in my personal xp). Whomever is going to read it and check for digital, will probably check closer on the signed pages. Also make sure the signature isn't too perfect and not too regular on the ink :)

Ditto. I've been doing it 11 years at this point and it's never come back to bite me.

Ditto, had it only once that they complained the signature on separate documents was identical. Well, just wrote it down a couple more times in case I run into that again.

I do the same

I've seen this one, I think it was on HN about a year ago, but a lot of the forms I've been signing in the last year have been stuff containing a fair amount of personal information (e.g. wife's immigration stuff, refinancing a house, banking annoyances, etc.). I can't really audit the code for an online service, and I find it unlikely that either Krita or ImageMagick are sending this information externally, considering both seem to work fine even without an internet connection.

EDIT: Clicking on it, I see the source code is available. If I can run it on my local box then this might be a little less nasty than mucking with the `convert` command.

I'm not too enthusiastic about uploading personal information and a signature to a random website.

I've signed and returned almost everything requiring a signature for years this way, you can even have multiple signatures (helpful when you need spouse to sign something too...) in Preview to speed up dealing with these kind of tasks. I've never once been asked to sign it with a pen instead, even for relatively complex transactions like houses/cars.

Because Preview lets you draw the signature using the TrackPad and a finger, I've had no difficulty making a very convincing replica of my actual signature in Preview.

While the linked tool may "look" more convincing with fake photocopy marks etc, for just signatures its not been necessary to go beyond Preview for me ever. In the US so much business is conducted on paperfree platforms like DocuSign etc that I don't think many people even notice the fact the signature is digital anymore, given platforms like DocuSign do more or less the same thing.

I had passport photos rejected due to my eyes being too shaded or something. One eye seemed a little darker according to the error messages. I tried taking new photos, including ones from I paid for (done at a pharamacy) and still failed.

In Preview I copied one eye and put it over my troubled eye, reversed. It worked.

I’ve been though face detection systems in various countries (US, UK, France) and I seem to get through ok.

I knew that, and I do run macOS, but the signature always looks "digital" to me. It's not bad, but with Krita and it's pen or pencil brushes, in combination with a decent drawing tablet (well, as decent as a Huion screen tablet is) with a pressure-sensitive pen, I can get something that looks outright indistinguishable to a physical signature.

Also iOS