Signature Extractor
Lift a signature off a photo of paper, with the background gone.
Drop a photo of your signature
Sign on plain paper and photograph it from directly above. A phone photo is fine — a shadow across the page is expected and handled.
Separating the ink from the paper…
That didn't work.
Your photo is read and the ink separated on your device, and never uploaded.
Keyboard shortcuts
- / or ⌘K
- Search every tool
- ⌘↵
- Run this tool, from anywhere on the page
- ⌘S
- Download the result
- ?
- Open and close this list
About the Pathine Signature Extractor
Takes a photograph of a signature on paper and gives you back the ink on its own — no paper, no shadow, no grey rectangle. The result is a PNG with a transparent background, cropped to the signature, that drops straight into a PDF, a Word document or an email footer.
The paper is not removed by picking one brightness and calling everything below it ink. A photo taken with a phone is lit from one side, so a single cut-off either loses the signature on the shadowed half of the page or keeps the shadow itself. This measures how much darker each mark is than the paper immediately around it, which is what makes a pencil signature in the light survive a shadow that is darker than the pencil.
You also get an SVG. A photograph has a fixed number of pixels and goes soft when it is enlarged; an outline has none, so the SVG is the one to use when the signature has to be printed on a letterhead, cut on a machine, or set at any size you like.
Everything happens in this browser tab. The photo is read on your device and the ink is separated on a canvas — it is not uploaded, which matters more here than on most tools, because a picture of your signature is worth more to somebody else than almost any other file you own.
When you'd reach for it
Signing a PDF that was emailed to you
A contract comes back marked "please sign and return". Print it, sign it, photograph it and you have a crooked grey scan; extract the signature instead and you can place it on the page where it belongs, with the rest of the document untouched.
A letter or invoice you send every month
Sign once, keep the PNG, and it goes on every copy from then on. A signature that is the same size and the same colour every time reads as a letterhead rather than as a photocopy.
A form that asks for a handwritten signature
Plenty of forms still want a signature that looks written rather than typed in a script font. This is your own hand, at the size the box needs, with nothing around it.
A maker's mark or an artist's signature
The same job with a different name: a hand-drawn mark that has to sit on a photograph, a print or a label without a white square behind it. Take the SVG for anything that gets printed large or cut on a machine.
How to get a signature out of a photo
-
Sign a sheet of plain paper
Unlined and white if you have it. A dark pen beats a pencil, and a thick nib beats a fine one — the tool is looking for marks that are clearly darker than the paper, and a ruled line printed on the page is a mark like any other.
-
Photograph it from directly above
A phone is fine. Fill most of the frame with the signature and hold the camera square to the page rather than at an angle. A shadow across the paper is expected and is handled; a reflection off a glossy sheet is not.
-
Drop the photo here
It is read on your device. The ink is separated, the specks of dust and paper grain are dropped, and the result is cropped to the signature itself with a small margin.
-
Adjust the ink if it needs it
The starting sensitivity is chosen by looking at your photo, so usually there is nothing to do. If part of a faint stroke is missing, drag the slider right; if flecks of paper have come through, drag it left. Original keeps your pen's own colour.
-
Download
The PNG for documents and email. The SVG for anything that will be printed or enlarged. Your original photo is not touched.
Common questions
Is my photo uploaded?
No. The picture is read and the ink is separated in this browser tab, on your device. Nothing is sent anywhere, there is no queue, and there is nothing on a server to delete afterwards. You can close the tab and the photo is gone.
Does this count as a legally binding signature?
It is an image of your signature, which is not the same thing as an electronic signature in the legal sense. For everyday paperwork — a letter, an invoice, an internal form, most agreements between people who already trust each other — an image is what everybody uses and it is fine. Where the law or the other party requires a signature that can be shown to be yours, they want a signing service that records who signed, when, and from where. That evidence is the product there, and no image can supply it.
Is it safe to keep my signature as a file?
Treat it the way you would treat a scan of your passport. Anyone who has the file can put your signature on anything, so keep it where you keep other private documents and do not post it publicly or leave it in a shared folder. The extraction itself happens on your device and adds no copies anywhere — what happens to the file afterwards is the part worth thinking about.
How do I put it into a PDF or a Word document?
In Word, Pages or Google Docs, insert it as a picture and set the text wrapping to "in front of text" so you can drag it onto the line. In a PDF editor, add it as an image stamp. The transparent background is what makes this work — the signature sits over whatever is underneath instead of covering it with a white box.
Nothing was found, or half the strokes are missing.
Almost always a pencil, a dying pen, or a photo taken in a dim room. Drag the sensitivity slider to the right and the fainter marks come through. If the whole page has come out as ink instead, drag it left — that is usually a photograph taken through a shadow with nothing much on the paper.
Why is my blue pen coming out black?
Only if you asked for black — Original is the default and keeps the pen's own colour. It samples that colour from the solid middle of your strokes and applies it evenly, rather than keeping the photograph's pixels, because every pixel of a photographed stroke has some paper mixed into it. Keeping them looks correct on paper and looks washed out the moment the signature is placed on anything else.
What size is the result, and can I make it bigger?
The PNG is cropped to your signature, so its size depends on how much of the frame the signature filled — a few hundred pixels across is typical, which is far more than a document needs. Very large photos are worked on at up to 1800 pixels on the long edge, since anything beyond that is detail of the paper rather than of the ink. For print, or for any size at all, take the SVG: it is made of outlines rather than pixels and stays sharp however large it is set.
Can I use lined or squared paper?
You can, but the lines are marks on the page and the tool will find them along with the signature. Faint blue or grey ruling often falls below the sensitivity and disappears on its own; anything darker will not. Plain paper is one less thing to fix.
What happens to the dust and paper grain?
Marks far smaller than anything the pen made are dropped automatically. The limit is worked out from your own picture — from the size of the largest mark on it and from the size of the image — and the gentler of the two wins, so the tool removes too little rather than risking the dot on an "i".