Q: Preview won't capture signature

Seems you need really strong light on the signature to make it work. I used my flashlight on my iphone to light the signature and finally it worked.

Spot on Valerie, (pardon the pun).

I came across the same problem this morning and took my laptop outside. Preview signature worked perfectly.

So the answer is you need a very good light source for preview to pick up the signature from the camera.  Webnurse

Quitting preview and starting over worked for me as well. Thanks for your help

I'm using Mavericks 10.9.1 and I just had this problem too. Very frustrating since I had to add a new signature to a document for my insurance co.

I tried over and over. Even tried deleting old signatures. Still didn't accept the new signature.

Eventually I contact Apple support. I chose to share my screen with support. This, strangely, did the trick. Downloaded the screen sharing software and connected to the support guy when he called.

Tried again and - presto! - it worked first time... I don't know if using that program resets something in your setup but I'm glad it worked.

So try that.

I was having the exact same problem.  I shone a VERY bright torch onto the signature and then it was captured. 

The bottom line is that Apple does not give the user any feedback about how this works.  If you don't see a preview of your signature, then it won't capture anything when you click "Accept".  The program must be able to lock on a good scan for signature and until it does, you cannot capture anything.  Improving lighting and holding the signature still help.  In any case, wait for the preview of your siganture to appear before clicking "Accept".  This whole thread could have been avoided with 2-3 lines of code that throws up an error if the program doesn't actually capture anything.

Congrats on succeeding, I have not yet.

So far in recent times, Apple has badly or completely broken for me on OS X the following things that I used to use:

Signatures as in this thread and others.

Canon MP830 scanner OS X support

Aperture

Final Cut Studio

email (unbeleivably buggy)

Cloud password safe

Cloud storage

Parental controls

My daughter's email name

Thing is, I'm thinking this is as bad as Microsoft at its worst, which is why I originally started using OS X.

I'm having to invest back into Microsoft and Adobe products, amongst others.

Right now I'll not put new data in anything Apple unless I can easily get it back out again, cause it can so easily go away on you if you do, whenever it suites Apple.

I'm moving away from having Apple in my workflow. I can't wait months for something broken in my workflow to be fixed, or spend weeks testing out my workflow because Apple has released a new version of something.

Oh my dear friends, the blue line should CUT ACROSS your signature unless it cuts, it wont record it. Try again like this.

CORRECT SIGNATURE

LenTS wrote:

 

So far in recent times, Apple has badly or completely broken for me on OS X the following things that I used to use:

 

email (unbeleivably buggy)

Recent versions of Mail have had problems, but it's improved with each update.  Have you tried it lately?

My daughter's email name

What do you mean by that?

deke4mama got the answer for me.  It was definitely the lighting that was the problem.  Going through the steps originally, everything would proceed as normal... but the signature wasn't saved for use... and Preview didn't give any error like "Image too dark... improve the lighting and try again" (which would have been oh-so-helpful!).

Re-orienting my laptop so that I could hold the paper facing the light solved the problem

Thanks everyone!

After reading this and several other threads around the web I was still tearing my hair out.  Signature always showed up in the preview box but wouldn't save when I clicked "accept". Also, no signature plist file was ever created.  What finally worked for me was holding down the accept button with the mouse for a couple seconds.  I was just clicking too quickly.  I could then create a signature even without the extra light and even with a fine point pen.  Now if only my hair will grow back.  Hope this helps!

It seems to also help to make your signture in camera touch the 'blue' line....

This worked for me. Open Finder and Select Go >> Go to Folder.

Copy and paste the following:

~/Library/Containers/com.apple.Preview/Data/Library/Preferences/com.apple.Preview.signatures.plist

Deleted the file and then try again.

Thank you - this worked.

After deleting the file - I closed down Preview. And then opened it up again to start from scratch.

It worked and could capture more than 1 signature.

No bright light required.

I was about to give up until I tried this. I had clicked Accept with the signature visible on Preview at least 15 times!

Thanks again

Turn up the brightness to max and try again. It worked for me.