Remove the background from a signature

How to Signature background remover

1. Sign on plain white paper and take a photo or scan. Press Choose pictures and pick it.
2. Watch the preview and move the Clean-up slider until the paper marks are gone and every stroke is whole.
3. Pick the Ink colour: As photographed, Black or Blue. Leave Trim the empty space around it ticked to cut away the blank paper.
4. Press Save signature (PNG), then Download.

How the ink is separated from the paper

A photo of white paper is rarely white. One corner is darker, the phone casts a shadow, the light is warmer on one side. So instead of one fixed level, the tool compares each spot with the paper just around it. Anything clearly darker than its own surroundings is kept as ink; the rest becomes see-through. A soft shadow that darkens the paper and the ink together is treated as paper, and the strokes inside it are kept.

Clean-up sets how much darker a mark must be to count as ink. Move it right if paper texture, shadows or faint lines are left; move it left if thin or light strokes start to disappear. The preview updates as you move it. The edges of the strokes are softened slightly so they do not look jagged.

Anything darker than the paper next to it counts as ink, not only your signature: printed text, a ruled line, a stamp, a finger or the edge of a table. Photograph the signature on its own, or cut it out first with Crop image.

Tips for a good photo

• Plain white paper with no lines, and nothing else written near the signature.
• Sign a little larger than usual, so each stroke is made of more pixels and stays smooth.
• A dark pen, black or dark blue. Pencil and light colours give faint, broken strokes.
• Even light, such as daylight from a window. Hold the phone flat above the paper so its shadow does not fall across the ink.
• Fill the frame with the paper, so no table or background shows around the edges, and keep the photo sharp.
• A scan works well too. If the photo is sideways, turn it first with Crop image.

Ink colour and trimming

As photographed keeps the colour of your pen, made a little darker so no paper tint is left in the strokes. Black and Blue paint every stroke one even colour, which helps when the photo has a yellow or grey cast, or when the pen was faint.

Trim the empty space around it cuts the picture down to the signature with a small margin. If the result still has a lot of empty space, a small speck or mark somewhere else was kept as ink: move Clean-up a little to the right, or crop the photo first. Untick it to keep the full size of the photo.

The file you get

A PNG with a see-through background, named after your photo with -signature added. In the preview, the grey and white squares show the see-through areas; on a document, the text or lines underneath show through instead. The longest side is at most 2400 pixels: bigger photos are scaled down, smaller ones keep their size. The result message shows its size in pixels.

You can place the PNG in any program that lets you insert a picture, such as a word processor, a slide editor or a PDF editor that adds images. The photo is processed in your browser and is never uploaded, and the saved PNG is a new picture without the hidden camera, date or location details of the original. Even so, keep the file somewhere private, as you would with your signature on paper.

What this tool does not do

It only cleans a picture of a signature you have already written on paper. It does not draw or create a signature for you, it does not check whether a signature is real, and it is not an electronic-signature service: it does not sign a PDF, record who signed or when, or add a digital signature. Whether a picture of your signature is accepted on a document is up to the person or organisation asking for it, so check with them.

Everything happens in your browser: your file is never uploaded to any server. You can check: once your file is open, turn on airplane mode — the tool still works.

Questions

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