I've been tasked with scanning the handwritten signatures for everyone in the office and then importing them into Exchange.
It went well for the first few ones, but then Exchange suddenly starts to blow up the size of the images when trying to use a signature.
I use an online service called LunaPic to create the transparent background (Exchange's native tool is not good enough), save to a .PNG- file and then import.
I've done a test and it's only AFTER downloading the edited signature from LunaPic that Exchange blow up the picture.
The height and width of before and after uploading stays the same, so it is not a question of LunaPic resizing the picture...
Any help would be much appreciated as I'm at my wits end
The imported signatures used to be available from the Documents/Signatures and Initials submenu but are gone now
I can 'manage' the signatures and create new ones or delete them, but I can't use them anymore and I can't customize the toolbars and drag them up there for availability!?
I've attached a screenshot to clarify -the signatures used to be listed as icons in the red outlined box.
1) My goal was asking you to post two sample PNG-files onto this forum.
That's why I mentioned that it must not be "real" signatures. Just for having an example of the 'before' and the 'after' situation.
In the meantime I have done a test myself via LunaPic, with a PNG-file of 402 x 174 pixels and 32-bit color depth.
I do not see a difference in the number of pixels in the resulting PNG, only the color depth that changed from 32 to 24.
Normally that should not lead to a difference in size when imported in PDF-XChange Editor, but it does.
I have tried the same, importing them in a Microsoft Word 2016 document: both pictures are equal in size.
So, this must probably be something wrong in PDF-XChange Editor v8.0.343.0 ?
2) To me it seems like the signatures for PDF-XChange Editor are stored in a file "signs.pdf", in a folder like "C:\Users\willy\AppData\Roaming\Tracker Software\PDFXEditor\3.0\Security", and protected with a password (that I do not know).
As long as that signs.pdf file is there, the signatures keep being available.
Why they should disappear without a known reason ? I do not know.
3) How to make the signatures available via the ribbons or toolbars ? I do not currently know.
Let us wait and hope for an answer from Tracker Software support (with thanks in advance).
My bad -you post so often and appear so knowledgeable that I mistook you for Tracker Support They ought to pay you, haha!
Thanks for taking the time to test and verify at your end.
In the meantime I know what happened to my signatures and it might be useful do others:
I had 'dragged' the signatures to my toolbar by way of 'Customize Toolbars...'
It would now appear as a small icon version of your handwritten signature -very neat and convenient.
The thing is: I now had several of these in my toolbar due to testing each persons signature before releasing it to them.
I deleted the signatures and now they were gone!
It appears that dragging the signature icon from Documents/Signature and Initials to the toolbar doesn't copy them but move them.
And now I cannot access them
So deleting them is permanent, unless a Reset will restore them. I'm hoping it doesn't come to that as I've got dozens of shortcuts I would hate to have to redo...
Good news (in case the signatures are still in the toolbar and you did not yet delete them):
It seems like, when you are in "Customize Toolbars"-mode, and then you do the reverse way, i.e. pressing the CTRL-key and dragging the signatures from your toolbar back to the Documents-menu > Signatures and Initials > just above the "Manage..."-entry, they are all back.
In case you like to copy something, instead of moving, press the CTRL-key while dragging items.
Sorry -but I really need to bump this and get the official support to chime in:
If I have dragged the 'Signature and Initials' -icon to the toolbar and then deleted it as described above, is there any way to get it back without resetting all toolbars?!
It was not clear to me that you dragged the menu entry itself onto one of your toolbars and then deleted it.
I am searching for a way to restore it without resetting all toolbars, but is does not seem obvious at first sight.
EDIT with solution:
- right click on one of your toolbars and click "Customize Toolbars"
- in the Toolbars tab of the dialog box, click on the name of the Menu entry (do not uncheck the check box)
- the "Reset"-button in the dialog box will light up
- click this "Reset"-button
- confirm by clicking "Yes"
- click "Close" to close the dialog box
Verify if the menu entry has been restored (and let us know if it worked or not)
NOTE: Later on, if you like to have your signatures available via one of the toolbars, then CTRL + drag the signatures themselves, NOT the menu entry.
I found another solution to the picture-blowout problem:
Using a third party photo editor, in this instance Paint.net, utilizing the 'magic wand'-tool, I created the transparent backgrounds and this time Exchange accepted the imports with the correct sizes
Now, using Paint.net doesn't result in as great a quality as LunaPic, but it is only visible zoomed in a couple thousand %, so no biggie.
I would still urge Tracker to look into this or even better -to improve on the 'remove background' feature native to the Editor...
My apologies for the overall radio silence on this topic here. As you said, Willy was overall doing a very good job answering most of your inquiries, and being entirely honest, I stepped away from this topic to focus on other tasks because of that. Having now reviewed the entire chain, I see a few times you both asked for our input which we missed speaking up on. Please allow me to try and get what may still be in the air explained now.
Regarding the "remove background" function. This function is intended primarily for PNG images and those which fully support transparency, If you used another format, that could be part of the issue. If the original image is not in PNG format, please try recreating it as a PNG and you may find there is no need to use an alternative solution to fix this. If you already are creating PNG images for use, please, as Willy suggested, send us a copy of a dummy signature you can reproduce the issue with (please send a dummy signature, not your real one). You can post images directly to the forums by simply dragging them into the text area when you are done typing your reply.
As willy found, the "signatures and initials" are indeed stored in our Appdata folder %appdata%\Tracker Software\PDFXEditor\3.0\Security
With a randomly generated password that even our Dev team does not know. It can only be opened programmatically by our Editor when it is explicitly used for the signatures and initials function, as a security measure.
Whenever something is missing from the toolbar, you can either reset the entire UI, the specific toolbar that tool would be on, or you could normally use the "commands" tab of the Customize UI window, and search for the function you are missing. Then drag it back to the toolbar manually.
The trouble here is that in this case, the "cmd.signs.list" (which is the signatures and initials panel) does not currently exist in the commands menu for selection. I have informed the Dev team of this and it should be added in for V9, coming in January, just in case this happens again.
I am glad that you at least found a workaround for this issue in the meantime though, and I do apologize for the inconvenience you have experienced.
Kind regards,
Dan McIntyre - Support Technician
Tracker Software Products (Canada) LTD
+++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++
Our Web site domain and email address has changed as of 26/10/2023.
https://www.pdf-xchange.com
Support@pdf-xchange.com
I've just run a test and here it gets a bit weird:
I scanned a dummy signature as a JPG and used both of windows native photoeditors, namely Paint and Paint 3D to save copies as PNG's.
-The Editor does NOT remove the background from a PNG-file created by Paint
-The Editor DOES remove the background from a PNG-file created by Paint 3D, but blows up the image and degrades the quality too much (the signature itself becomes somewhat transparent)
-The Editor DOES remove the background from a JPG-file, but degrades the quality too much as described above
I've attached both PNG's, the original scanned JPG and a screenshot of how it looks on my end.
That being said -using the program Paint.Net has proven much more efficient than uploading it on some website and eliminates any risk of malware being attached.
I'm looking forward to having the signature added as a command in V9.
Take a look at http://techshangrila.blogspot.com/2015/04/how-to-vectorize-your-signature-with.html
Quite a bit more work, but the result is a vector signature.
Thank you for those files and the patience while we looked into them. Regarding the transparency and size issues, we have reproduced them here and created a formal bug report, which you can ask me about updates on the progress of here in the future. Unfortunately I cannot provide a timeline on when the resolution will be available for this. RT#5409: Issues with initials transparency and Size
As for the trouble with the signature itself fading to become semi-transparent. This is a side effect of using a lighter color like blue for the signature, and a rough medium like pen on paper, the drawing itself is light enough that some pieces are caught and faded out slightly by the transparency effect. This is not something we will be able to do much about, without restricting our transparency function to working only with perfectly white backgrounds (which we do not want to do). In that regard specifically, you may be better off using a touchscreen/stylus device to draw your signature in a format where you can use a solid color with less (hopefully no) variance in color.
Kind regards,
Dan McIntyre - Support Technician
Tracker Software Products (Canada) LTD
+++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++
Our Web site domain and email address has changed as of 26/10/2023.
https://www.pdf-xchange.com
Support@pdf-xchange.com
They ought to pay you, haha!
-but I really need to bump this and get the official support to chime in:
