Logos, images and photos

This article covers the three kinds of picture a signature can carry: an Image, such as your logo or a banner, which is the same for everyone, a Sign-off, which is a name or a short phrase drawn in a handwriting style for each sender, and a Profile photo, which is each person's own photo, from Microsoft 365 or uploaded in Footer365.

Add your logo or another image

1. In the editor, open Insert and drag Image (in Media and social) onto the canvas. It shows a placeholder until it has a picture.
2. With the image selected, under What it shows, the Image field has three tabs. Choose one:
   • Upload, then Choose a picture to upload to pick a file from your computer,
   • From the library, to use a picture you have already named in your image library, or
   • Address, to type the address of an image that is already online.
3. Optionally, add a Link to make the image clickable, for example your website.
4. Add Alt text: a short description read out to people who cannot see the image, and shown when a mail program blocks images. It matters most when the image is a link.
5. Optionally, add Title (hover text), which appears when a reader hovers over the image.
6. Select Save.

Uploads can be JPEG, PNG, GIF or WebP, and must be smaller than 15 MB. In the template editor, a picture you upload opens in Crop the picture first, as described below.

Crop a picture as you upload it

When you choose a picture with Choose a picture to upload in the template editor, Crop the picture opens before anything is uploaded. Above the picture it shows the size of the part you are keeping, in pixels, and its shape, such as 3 to 1.

• Drag the picture, or use the arrow keys, to choose what stays. Hold Shift with an arrow key to move it further. Zoom brings the picture closer.
• Drag a corner or an edge of the frame to change how much is kept.
• Under Shape of the cut, As the box keeps the shape of the element's Width and Height under Spacing and border, and is offered only when both are set. Square keeps the frame square, and Free lets it take any shape. A frame that keeps its shape is changed from its corners.
• Select Crop and upload to upload the part in the frame, Use the whole picture to upload it as it is, or Cancel to upload nothing.

The cut is made by Footer365 from your file, so what is saved is what the frame showed, and both the embedded and the hosted copy are made from it. The original picture is not kept: to crop it differently, upload it again. A GIF or a WebP picture is saved as a still picture, cut from its first frame, and the window says so before you crop it. A file of another type, such as a HEIC photo from an iPhone, is refused before the window opens.

Pictures uploaded in the campaign editor, and on Signatures and then Brand, are uploaded whole.

Add a handwritten sign-off

A Sign-off draws a name or a short phrase, such as Kind regards, in a handwriting style, as a picture with nothing behind the letters.

1. Open Insert and drag Sign-off (in Media and social, after Image) onto the canvas. It starts as the sender's first name.
2. Under What it shows, type the Text: a name or a short phrase of up to 40 characters, on one line. A merge field such as {{FirstName}} is filled in for each sender. The Alt text is always the same words, so a mail program that blocks images, and a screen reader, still have them.
3. Under How it looks, choose the Style: Mrs Saint Delafield (formal and slanted), Kristi (quick and upright) or Nothing You Could Do (a plain marker hand). Then choose the Size, Small, Medium or Large, and the Ink. Align and Placement work as they do for any element.
4. Under Spacing and border, Width is the widest the sign-off is drawn: 320 pixels unless you change it.

The canvas and the previews draw the sample person's own value. Footer365 draws the picture for each sender when their signature is made, on its own servers and with fonts it holds itself, so no font file is sent to anyone and no name is ever put into a web address. Mail through Footer365 carries it inside the message, and the Outlook add-in puts it into the signature as it does a small image, so it counts towards the add-in's size limit as an embedded image does.

In the plain-text version

A plain-text email cannot show a picture, so the text version of your signature has the sign-off's words, as typed, where the picture stands in the design: Kind regards, {{FirstName}} reads Kind regards, Jordan for Jordan. The fields are filled in as they are for the picture, and a sender whose sign-off is left out (see below) has no words there either. If you have written the template's plain-text version yourself, your text is kept as you wrote it, and the Plain-text version card tells you that the text made from the design has changed, so you can add the words if you want them. Edit the plain-text version of a template

Ink and dark mode

In dark mode a mail program changes the colours of text and backgrounds but leaves a picture as it is, so a sign-off drawn in black disappears on a dark page. The default ink is a mid-tone slate, #6f7f9c, which reads on a white page and on a dark one. Under Ink, On a white page and On a dark page show how strongly the ink stands out, as a contrast ratio worked out the way the Web Content Accessibility Guidelines (WCAG 2.2) do, against white and against the dark reading pane of the editor's email client previews. A ratio under 3 to 1, the guidelines' minimum for large text, turns amber with a note. It is only a warning: the sign-off is sent in the ink you choose.

When a sign-off is left out

A sign-off is never sent half-drawn or cut off. It is left out for a sender, with no gap and with the rest of the signature as designed, when:

• its words come to nothing for them, or they have no value for a field in it other than their name or email address,
• the style cannot draw one of the letters in their words, or
• their words will not fit the Width, even drawn smaller. A long name is drawn smaller until it fits, down to half the size chosen, and is left out past that.

All three styles draw the accented letters most western European languages use, such as those of German, Spanish, Portuguese and the Nordic languages. Beyond those, Mrs Saint Delafield draws a few more, among them the S and Z with a caron and the L with a stroke, and Nothing You Could Do draws most of the letters Czech, Polish, Turkish and Hungarian names use, but not the A, E or U with a hook or bar beneath or above it that Polish and Lithuanian use. Kristi draws almost none beyond the western European letters. None of the styles draws Cyrillic, Greek, Arabic or Chinese letters.

In a template's editor in the customer portal, if you can view the directory, the editor checks the sign-off's words against your people as you type, and says how many have a letter the chosen style cannot draw, with up to ten of their names and how many of them the other styles would draw. Publishing is never stopped: a person the style cannot draw simply gets no sign-off. The canvas says too when the sample person's sign-off would be left out.

The three styles are free fonts from Google Fonts, published under the SIL Open Font License, and Footer365 keeps them whole, with their licences. A sign-off drawn with them is yours to use.

Use an image from the library

If your organisation keeps its logos and badges in the image library, pick one under From the library instead of uploading it again. The picture stays linked to the library, so when someone replaces that image on Signatures and then Brand, every template that uses it changes with it. Uploading a picture or typing an address makes the image the element's own again. See Brand kits and the image library.

Embed or Host

When you upload an image, Footer365 keeps two copies of it, and Image handling chooses which one the signature uses. You can switch between them at any time without uploading again.

• Embed puts the image inside the email itself. It uses a compressed copy, so signatures stay small and reliable. This is the default for a new upload.
• Host links to a full-quality copy stored online, and the recipient's mail program loads it from there. Choose it for a large, detailed banner or photo where quality matters. It shows as a broken image in the Outlook on the web compose window, but it is fine in the email your recipient receives.

Outlook limits how large a signature it can insert, so Footer365 keeps the combined size of your embedded images within that limit. If an upload would go over it, you see Inline image limit reached and the image is switched to Host. To embed it instead, set another embedded image to Host to make room.

The whole signature has to fit that limit too, not only its images. The size meter beside Edit and Preview shows how much of it your signature takes, as you edit, and hovering over it opens Outlook Add-In size with the figure broken down into the template, its embedded images, the campaign banner and the add-in's own marker. See Using the signature editor. A template over the limit is not shown while writing: the signature is added when the message is sent instead. With the Outlook add-in only, nothing adds it at send, so the message goes without a signature. See I cannot see my signature while writing. Removing large images or repeated elements makes a template smaller, and leaves room for a campaign banner.

When an email passes through Footer365, embedded images travel inside the message and hosted images stay as links. If a recipient sees your images as attachments, see Images arrive as attachments.

A different logo for some senders

One Image element can carry other pictures for some senders, such as a logo for each brand or office. Select the image and, under What it shows, use Add an image for a condition in Image for some senders. Each picture is added with Upload, or by typing its address into Image URL, and follows the Image handling set for the element. It keeps the element's size, link and alt text, so the layout stays the same whichever logo a sender gets. See Show different content to different people.

Size your image

• After an upload, the image is set to the size of the copy in use. Change it under Spacing and border with Width and Height, in pixels.
• There is no lock on the proportions. If you change the width, change the height to match, or the image may look squashed.
• Under How it looks, Fit decides what happens when the box and the image differ: Proportion keeps the image's shape, and Stretch fills the box.
• The whole signature is limited by Template width in Theme, which is 600 pixels unless you change it.

Show each person's profile photo

1. Open Insert and click Profile photo (in Contact fields), or drag it onto the canvas.
2. Under How it looks, choose a Shape. A circle is the default.
3. Under Spacing and border, set Width and Height. The default is 72 by 72 pixels.

The photo is each person's Microsoft 365 profile photo, which Footer365 collects during directory sync, unless a photo has been uploaded for them in Footer365, which is used instead. Footer365 collects the 96 by 96 pixel version where Microsoft 365 has one, and saves an uploaded photo at 256 by 256 pixels, so keep the element at 96 pixels or smaller for a sharp result with Microsoft 365 photos.

Anyone without a photo simply gets no photo: the element is left out of their signature rather than showing an empty box. In the editor the photo shows as a placeholder, and the real photo is added when the email is sent.

To upload a photo for someone, many at once from a ZIP, or to stop using Microsoft 365's photos, see Upload signature photos. The photo window has an eye line and a head-and-shoulders outline to place each face against, so everyone's photo is framed alike, and the ZIP list shows a small picture of each photo as it will be saved.

Good to know

• If you replace or remove an uploaded image before saving, the unused upload is deleted. Images in saved versions are kept until those versions are gone. A library image is never deleted by taking it off a template: it stays in the library until someone deletes it there.
• A cropped picture cannot be uncropped, because the original is not kept. Upload it again to crop it another way.
• For small symbols such as a phone or map pin, the Icon element is a better fit than an image. It is drawn as a picture that displays in every mail program.

Related articles

• Using the signature editor
• Brand kits and the image library
• Dark mode and email client previews
• Dark mode makes my logo disappear