Signature generator

What this tool does

It turns your signature into a small picture you can drop into a Word document, a PDF, an email footer or a form. You can draw it with a mouse, a finger on a phone or tablet, or a stylus, or you can type your name and pick a handwriting style. The result is a PNG with a transparent background, cut tight around the ink, with a small even margin you choose. Because the background is transparent, the signature sits on top of a signature line or a coloured header without a white box around it.

Everything happens in your browser. The strokes you draw and the name you type are never uploaded, and nothing is stored after you close the page.

How to use it

1. Choose Draw or Type.
2. To draw, sign inside the white pad, above the dashed line. Each time you lift the pen is one stroke: Undo removes the last one, Clear starts again. If you sign with a stylus or Apple Pencil, switch on pen pressure to get thicker lines where you press harder.
3. To type, enter your name and try the styles. They use fonts that are already on your device, so the same style looks different on Windows, macOS, Android and iPhone. Nothing is downloaded from a font service.
4. Pick the ink colour. Black is safest for printing and scanning; dark blue is the classic "signed by hand" look.
5. Set the pen width, the resolution (2×, 3× or 4× the size of the pad) and the empty margin, then download the PNG.

Getting a clean result

• Sign larger than you need. A signature drawn across most of the pad has smooth curves; the picture can always be made smaller in Word or a PDF editor, but enlarging a small one makes it blurry.
• Use 3× or 4× for printing. A signature about 5 cm wide printed at 300 DPI needs roughly 600 pixels across. A drawing 400 pixels wide on screen exported at 3× gives 1,200, which is plenty.
• Trim is automatic. The tool finds the outermost ink pixels and cuts the picture there, then adds the margin you set. A margin of 8 to 16 pixels keeps the loops from touching the edge of a text box.
• In Word, insert the PNG, set its layout to "In front of text" and drag it onto the line. In most PDF editors, add it as an image or as a custom signature stamp.

What a signature picture is, and is not

A picture of your signature is not a digital signature. Anyone who receives the document can copy the PNG, and nothing in the file proves who placed it there or that the text was not changed afterwards. It is fine for everyday paperwork that would otherwise be printed, signed and scanned. For contracts, invoices, tax filings or anything where the law asks for an electronic or digital signature, use a signing service or a certificate-based signature that your counterparty and your country accept. Keep the PNG itself private, as you would a rubber stamp.

Why the background is transparent

A JPG cannot store transparency, so a "white" signature saved as JPG is really a white rectangle. On a grey form or a coloured letterhead the rectangle shows. PNG keeps an alpha channel: pixels without ink are fully transparent, and the soft edges of each stroke are partly transparent, so the line blends with whatever is underneath. The checkerboard in the preview stands for "nothing here".

For a longer walk through, with sizes and the common mistakes, read how to make a transparent signature PNG for Word and PDF. If you need to remove a background from a photo of a signature on paper, crop it first with the image crop tool; to put a signature into a PDF you already have, the PDF toolkit can combine pages.