Remove the background from a signature
Photograph your signature on paper and get it as a transparent PNG for documents.
- Private by defaultDeleted within an hour
- Super FastProcess in seconds
- No Sign-upStart instantly
How it works
Add your images
Drag and drop, paste, or pick files. They upload over an encrypted connection.
Pick a quality or a target size
Use the quality slider, or tell it exactly how many KB or MB you need.
Download
Save each file, or grab them all at once as a ZIP.
To put a handwritten signature on a document, you need it without the paper. Sign on plain white paper with a dark pen, photograph it in even light, and add the photo here. The tool clears the paper and leaves the ink on a transparent background, as a PNG you can place in a word processor or a PDF form.
A few things make the difference between a clean result and a patchy one. Use a pen with a solid dark line; pale ballpoint and pencil are easy to lose. Avoid shadows across the paper, including the shadow of your phone. Fill the frame with the signature, or crop the photo first, so that the signature is clearly the subject of the picture. The feather starts at zero on this page to keep the strokes sharp.
Be aware of what this tool is. It is built to find the subject of a photo, and a thin line of ink is an unusual subject; very fine strokes can break up or disappear, so compare the result with the original before you rely on it. A signature is also sensitive. The photo is sent over an encrypted connection, processed on our own servers, never passed to anyone else, and the result is deleted within an hour. Whether an image of a signature is acceptable on a given document is a legal question that depends on the document and the country.
Putting the signature into a document
In a word processor, insert the PNG as a picture and set its text wrapping to In front of text. It can then be dragged onto the signature line without pushing the paragraphs apart, and because the background is transparent the line and any printed name show through beneath the ink. Scale it by a corner handle, never by a side handle, so the proportions stay true. A width of four to five centimetres on the page looks like a real signature.
For a PDF, most readers have a fill-and-sign or stamp function that accepts an image, and it places the PNG the same way. Save or export the finished document as a new file, so that the signed version cannot be mixed up with the blank one.
When a form wants a signature file instead
Online applications often ask for the signature as a separate upload, and their rules are different. They usually want a JPG, on white, within a set pixel size and under a small file limit, often 10 to 20 KB. Transparency is no use there, because JPG cannot hold it.
The same cut-out serves both needs. Switch the background from Transparent to White and JPG becomes available as a format. Then take the file to the compressor's 20 KB page on this site, set the pixel size the form asks for and the target size it allows. Clean white is very cheap to store, so a signature prepared this way meets tight limits with the strokes still sharp.
Treat the file like a key
A transparent image of your signature is convenient for you and equally convenient for anyone else who obtains it. Keep it somewhere private; the downloads folder of a shared computer is the wrong place. Do not send it by itself in an email or a chat; sign the document and send that. If several people in an office place signatures on documents, each should have only their own file. On our side the photo is discarded once it has been processed and the result is removed within the hour, but the copy you download is yours to look after.
Frequently asked questions
What is the best way to photograph a signature?
Dark pen, plain white paper, even light with no shadows, and the signature filling the frame.
Parts of my signature are missing. Why?
Very thin or pale strokes can be read as paper. A thicker, darker pen gives a better result.
Is my signature stored?
No. The photo is not kept, and the result is deleted within one hour.
Is a pasted signature legally valid?
That depends on the document and the country. This tool only prepares the image.
Will blue ink stay blue?
Yes. Only the paper is removed; the colour of the ink is not changed. Dark blue and black both work well, pale blue less so.
Is a scan better than a photo?
Usually. A flatbed scanner lights the paper evenly and adds no shadow or perspective, which are the two things that most often spoil a photographed signature.