Using Digital Signature to Seal Engineered Drawings

[amplogho]

I am trying to figure out how to comply with the electronic signature requirements most US states have implemented for sealing of blueprints by engineers or architects, particularly FL. I can apply a Stamp, which I have created in Acrobat with a dynamic date field to show when the Stamp was applied to the page. That does not seem to always be an acceptable form of certifying the pages digitially, however, even though Adobe asks for an Identity Setup when you begin applying the Stamp. It sounds like Digital Signature may be the best solution for this in Acrobat since not all the pages in a document always pertain to the same discipline and should be signed individually by the professionals. I am very unclear as to how the authentication works and whether the image of the seal should be part of the Digital Signature process or applied separately as a Stamp as I have been doing. Also, since Digital Signature saves the document after each page is signed, and these documents are often 20 or more pages long, is there a better way to do this?

[try67]

> I am very unclear as to how the authentication works and whether the image of the seal should be part of the Digital Signature process or applied separately as a Stamp as I have been doing.

-  This is a legal question. You need to ask a lawyer who specializes in this field in your state.

> Also, since Digital Signature saves the document after each page is signed, and these documents are often 20 or more pages long, is there a better way to do this?

- You only need to digitally sign a file once. Signing each page is useless, as the signature applies to the entire file as a whole.

[amplogho]

Thank you for your response. I don't fully understand these tools yet and I imparted my issue incorrectly and used incorrect terms. When I use Digitally Sign under the Use a Certificate area, Acrobat asks me to draw a signature box to apply the signature. My impression from reading and videos was that this is different than using Certify with either visible or invisible signatures. I thought that Digitally Sign only applied to the page, and Certify was for the whole document? Is there another tool I am missing or do I perhaps misunderstand the purpose difference in these tools?

[try67 · Accepted solution]

I would recommend using a Digital Signature field instead of these tools.

It will allow you to define the area where the signature will appear, and also to create a signature profile for yourself with more than one appearance. For example, you can include the image of the "seal" you want to use as such an appearance and have the best of both worlds: A real digital signature (which only needs to be applied once per file, per signer) AND the look of the seal you want to create.

[amplogho]

Is that E-Sign under the Fill & Sign area? I think this is the source of my confusion, so many different ways to sign a document with subtle differences between them. Thank you for your help.

[try67]

No, it's a form field you can add under Prepare Form mode.

And yes, I agree there are too many ways of doing it, each one with its own subtle differences from the rest. It is quite confusing.