Signature Extractor

How to extract your signature from paper

1. Sign on plain white paper, take a straight photo or scan in good light, and choose it. The green box shows the signature the tool found.
2. If it picked up other marks, drag a box around your signature. Move Ink sensitivity down to drop grey smudges or ruled lines, or up to keep faint strokes.
3. Choose Transparent PNG for documents, or Exam form JPG and your exam. When the checklist is all green, download the file.

Example: one signature, two exam forms

You sign on white paper and take a 4,000 × 3,000 px phone photo. The tool works on a 1,600 × 1,200 px copy, whitens the paper and finds the ink; say the signature's box there is 600 × 160 px. With the default 8% space around it, that is a 714 × 190 px picture. Then, under Exam form JPG:

• SSC: the signature is framed at the worked-out 709 × 236 px (6.0 × 2.0 cm at 300 DPI; SSC states no pixel size), with white above and below the ink, saved as a JPEG between 10,240 and 20,000 bytes (10–20 KB) with 300 DPI written in, and named ssc-signature-709x236.jpg.
• KCET: the signature is kept at 714 × 190 px, as KCET sets no pixel size, saved as a JPEG at or under 49,000 bytes (less than 50 KB), and named kcet-signature-714x190.jpg.

The box size is only an example: the tool measures the ink in your own photo. The pixel sizes and byte ranges above are what the tool works out from it; the JPEG quality it lands on depends on the picture. For a transparent PNG, the same 714 × 190 px picture is saved as it is.

How the clean-up works

A phone photo of white paper is never white: it comes out grey or cream, darker in one corner, often with your hand's shadow across it. The tool first measures the paper's own colour in small patches across the picture and divides each pixel by it, the same “Whiten the paper” step the exam photo tools use for scans. Paper and soft shadows become pure white, and ink keeps its colour, so blue stays blue.

Next, each pixel gets an ink amount from how dark it is, with a soft edge so strokes stay smooth rather than jagged. The dark marks are then grouped into connected shapes. A solid dark shape touching the edge of the picture (a table, the paper's edge, a dark corner) is left out when there is ink elsewhere, tiny specks far from the signature are dropped, and small marks close to it, like the dot of an i or a full stop, are kept. The box around what is left is your signature. If the signature itself runs to the edge of a tightly cropped photo, it is kept.

For a PNG, the ink is drawn in one colour (your pen's, measured from the middle of the strokes, or one you choose) on a transparent background. For an exam file, the signature is fitted inside the form's shape with the space you set around it, on white, and saved as a JPEG at the highest quality that fits the KB range, with the checklist worked out from the finished file.

Signature rules for exam forms

These are the signature uploads the tool can make, from each exam's official notice. Pick the exam under Exam form JPG and the size, KB range and file name follow it. Each exam's own page has all its uploads, with the notice's words quoted. RRB, SSC take no uploaded photo at all (the form captures a live photo instead), so the signature is the upload you make for them.

Check the latest notice before you apply: these rules are from the notices as we read them, and each exam's page says when we will check again.

Taking a photo of your signature that cleans up well

• Sign on plain, unruled white paper with a pen that writes evenly. A gel or ink pen gives darker, more even strokes than a ballpoint that skips.
• Sign at your normal size and in your normal running hand. A form compares the signature you upload with the one you sign at the exam.
• Photograph it straight from above in daylight, with no flash, so there is no glare on the ink. Turn the photo with Turn 90° if it's sideways.
• Fill most of the picture with the paper. A little table at the edges is fine, because the tool leaves edge marks out.

Using the transparent PNG

Place it on a PDF with Sign PDF or the PDF Editor, or insert it into a Word file or a letterhead as a picture. If you'd rather draw or type a signature on screen, the Signature Generator does that. For a photo with your name and date at the bottom, use Add Name and Date to Photo, and to test a file you already have against an exam's rules, the Admit Card Photo Checker.