Three ways to sign, including a genuine PKCS#7 cryptographic signature that appears in Adobe Reader's Signature Panel and is tamper-evident.
"Signing a PDF" can mean very different things. Pasting a picture of your signature is not the same as a cryptographically verifiable signature that proves a document has not been altered. MayaPDF gives you three signature types so you can match the method to the stakes.
Draw your signature with a mouse, finger, or stylus; type it; or upload an image of it. MayaPDF places it on the page and flattens it into the PDF. This is quick and familiar — right for low-stakes internal documents where you just need a visible mark.
A formal block showing the signer's name, the date, and a reason ("Approved", "Verified"). It reads like the signature line on an office letter and is useful when you want a clear, human-readable record on the page.
This is the one that carries legal and technical weight. MayaPDF embeds an industry-standard PKCS#7 digital signature into the PDF using an incremental update, so the original bytes are preserved and a signature revision is appended. In practice that means:
You can also combine a visible signature block with the invisible cryptographic signature, so the document both looks signed and is verifiably signed.
Legal standing (IT Act 2000): a signature with legal effect under India's Information Technology Act, 2000 requires a Digital Signature Certificate (DSC) issued by a CCA-licensed Certifying Authority. MayaPDF Pro lets you sign with your own DSC/PFX for exactly this. A self-signed certificate generated in-app is fine for internal use but has no such standing and will show as "validity unknown" in Adobe. MayaPDF does not claim in-app self-signed signatures are legally valid or court-admissible.
During the free trial you can generate a self-signed certificate inside MayaPDF and sign with it. When a recipient opens such a PDF, Adobe Reader will show the signature as "validity unknown" until they choose to trust your certificate. This is normal, expected behaviour for any self-signed certificate — it does not mean the signature is broken; it means the reader has not yet been told to trust that particular issuer. The signature is still cryptographically valid and tamper-evident.
If you have a Digital Signature Certificate (DSC) from a licensed Indian Certifying Authority, or any PFX/.p12 certificate, MayaPDF Pro lets you upload it and sign with it. That produces a signature backed by a recognised certificate, which is what you need for legally consequential documents. This is a Pro feature (₹999/year) — the strongest and most honest reason to upgrade: anyone who needs a legally usable signature should use their own certificate.
Your security matters here: certificate private keys generated in-app are stored encrypted with AES-256-GCM, and a PFX password you type is used in memory only — never stored or logged.
Electronic records and electronic signatures are recognised under India's Information Technology Act, 2000. Whether a specific document can be signed electronically depends on its type and the applicable rules; some instruments still require other formalities. MayaPDF gives you the technical tools; the appropriateness for a given document is your call.