Have you ever seen emails with a handwritten signature at the bottom? One that has actually been handwritten and isn’t just a font? Ever wonder how you can get that same effect? It’s actually pretty easy. All you need is a scanner, Photoshop, and some time. Watch the video below, or keep reading for exactly how you can create a handwritten email signature.
How to create a handwritten email signature
1. Take a clean white piece of paper and sign your name on it. I recommend using a marker or a black pen. Nothing too thin. And write big if needed. You can always scale the signature down later on.
2. Scan your signature as a .jpg or .png. You can also either take an image with your phone or use a scanning app such as TurboScan. https://itunes.apple.com/us/app/turboscan-pro-pdf-scanner/id342548956?mt=8
3. Once you have your image uploaded to your computer, open it up with PhotoShop. If you signed your name multiple times on the paper, crop out the one you want to use.
4. Go to Image > Adjustments and select Black & White. Keep the settings the same and hit okay. You’ll see that the coloring should have disappeared from your signature.
5. Now go to Image > Adjustments and select Brightness/Contrast. Using the slider, drag the brightness to the right. In the example above, I didn’t end up adjusting the brightness, so don’t feel like you need to. You just want to get the signature as black as possible and the background as white as possible. Do the same with contrast. In this case, I dragged the contrast all the way up.
6. With that done, go back to Image > Adjustments and select Levels. This part will take a bit of trial and error to get it looking how you want. Under the graph, grab any of those arrows and drag them. Try different combinations until you find a combination that works. Again, the goal is black writing and a white background.
7. Go to your layers panel and click on the lock on the background layer. The lock icon should disappear. Then, in the toolbar, select the magic wand tool. Check the tolerance in the top info bar. I have mine set to 15, which worked well for me. Select the white background and then hit the delete key. The white should be gone. Do it again with any white areas that remain.
8. At this point you’re pretty much done. If you need to straighten out your signature, go to Edit > Free Transform and you can rotate it. Once everything is looking good, go to Image > Trim. Make sure Transparent Pixels is selected and that the boxes next to top, bottom, left, and right are all checked off. This will get rid of all of the empty space around your signature.
9. Now that you’re done go to File > Export and select Quick Export as PNG. This is important as it allows you to save the signature with a transparent background.
That’s it! You can always resize your signature as needed. I would recommend you duplicate the file though and save as another smaller version. This way you have the full size version still saved (since you worked hard on it!).
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How to Create a Handwritten Email Signature was originally posted on Allyssa Barnes.