- Home
- Make a transparent signature
Make a transparent signature
Sign on paper, take a photo, and get a clean PNG with a transparent background, ready for documents and email.
- Dark pen, plain paper. A black or blue pen on white paper gives the cleanest edges.
- Even light. Daylight from a window, no flash, and no shadow of your phone across the page.
- Fill the frame. Hold the phone flat above the signature and get close; the result is cropped to the ink.
How to make a transparent signature from a photo
- Sign a piece of plain white paper with a dark pen. A felt-tip or gel pen gives the boldest line.
- Take a photo in good, even light, holding the phone flat above the paper. Or scan it.
- Choose the photo here. The paper is removed and the image is cropped to your signature.
- If faint parts are missing, raise the Threshold. If the edges look rough or grey specks remain, raise the Contrast or lower the Threshold.
- Pick the ink colour (your pen’s own colour, clean black or blue) and download the transparent PNG.
How the background removal works
Phone photos are rarely evenly lit: one corner is brighter, a shadow falls across the other. So instead of one cut-off for the whole picture, the paper’s brightness is measured in small areas across the photo, and each pixel is compared with the paper right around it. Pixels that are darker than their paper become ink, with soft, anti-aliased edges; everything else becomes transparent.
With Original ink, the colour of your pen is kept, taken from the darkest, surest strokes so the edges have no paper-coloured fringe. Black and Blue recolour it to clean ink. It all runs in your browser: the photo is never uploaded.
Using your transparent signature
- On documents: insert the PNG in Word or Google Docs and set it in front of text, or sign a PDF with it here.
- In email: use it in an email signature by hosting the image online and linking to it.
- Keep the PNG. Converting to JPG fills the transparent background with white.
Prefer to start from scratch? Draw or type a signature instead, or browse signature fonts.
Questions and answers
Is my photo uploaded?
No. The photo is processed by your browser on your device. Nothing is sent to a server.
Why is part of my signature missing?
The ink was too faint compared with the paper. Raise the Threshold, or take the photo again in brighter, even light with a darker pen.
Why are there grey spots around my signature?
Shadows, paper texture or dust can read as faint ink. Lower the Threshold a little or raise the Contrast. Crop the photo closer to the signature before choosing it if needed.
Which file types can I use?
JPG, PNG and WebP photos from a phone, camera or scanner. On an iPhone, the photo picker hands over a JPG automatically. You can also paste a copied image or screenshot.
Can I get an SVG?
A photo is made of pixels, so it downloads as PNG. For a vector SVG, draw or type your signature in the signature generator.
How do I take a good photo of my signature?
Plain white paper, a dark pen, daylight from a window, no flash, and the phone held flat and close so the signature fills most of the frame.