How to Add a Professional Handwritten Signature to Your Email

How an email comes across is a public representation of the sender and the organization. While the electronic format does not require formal letterheads and wax seals, email signatures have become the virtual equivalent.

However, email signatures can lack the personal touch that comes with signing your name on paper. To really make your email stand out in a recipient’s inbox, you can add a handwritten signature to give an extra level of professionalism to your message.

It’s actually fairly easy to add a handwritten signature to every email you send. You can use old fashioned methods like writing your signature on a piece of paper and uploading an image of it to your computer. There are also various free signature creator tools available online where you draw your signature using your mouse. Essentially, learning how to make a handwritten signature that can be added to your email is not as complicated as it first seems.

Find how to make a handwritten signature and add it to your email via the methods below.

Using a scanner

1. Draw a signature on a plain piece of paper.
2. Use a scanner to scan the paper and save the image as a .png or .jpg file.
3. Open a new message in your email client.
4. Click ‘Insert a picture’ to add the image.
5. Use your email client’s image tools to crop the signature and resize it.
6. Send an email message with your new handwritten signature.

Using a mobile device or digital camera

1. Write your signature on a plain piece of paper.
2. Take a photo of the signature using either a smartphone or digital camera.
3. Send the photo to your email address.
4. Save the signature image to your computer.
5. Open your email client and insert the image.
6. Crop and resize the signature image using the email client’s image tools.

N.B. You can also use programs like Microsoft Paint or Adobe Photoshop to crop the image before inserting it into your email client in both cases.

Using a pen tablet

1. Open the drawing software you use, e.g. Adobe Photoshop or Corel Draw.
2. Draw a digital signature directly using the pen on the tablet screen.
3. Resize and crop the signature image.
4. Save the image as a .png or .jpg.
5. Insert the image into your email client.

Creating a handwritten signature online

1. Use a free handwritten signature generator/creator like Signature Maker.
2. In the box, draw your online signature using your mouse. This might take a few attempts.
3. Click Save when complete and then download your image.
4. Insert the image into your email client from your Downloads folder.