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A signature scanned from paper arrives as dark ink sitting on a white rectangle. Dropped into a contract, that rectangle covers the line it is meant to sit on along with any text around it. Removing the background leaves just the ink, so the signature falls on the document the way a pen would. Clear Canvas does this in your browser — which matters here, because a signature is not a file you want to hand to someone else’s server.
Why Use Clear Canvas
- Keeps just the ink — no white box over your document
- Works from a flatbed scan or a phone photo of paper
- Exports a transparent PNG ready for PDFs and word processors
- Your signature is processed on your device and never uploaded
- No account, no watermark, no limit
- Free, on desktop and mobile alike
How It Works
- 1
Add your signature image
Drop a scan or photo of your signature into the tool above.
- 2
The paper background is removed
The AI keeps the ink and clears the page behind and between the strokes.
- 3
Download the transparent PNG
Place it into a PDF, a contract or an email signature.
Why a scanned signature needs more than cropping
Cropping tightly around a signature removes most of the page but not the paper itself. You still have a small white rectangle, and it still covers the printed line you place it over. What is actually needed is transparency between and around the pen strokes, so the document shows through the gaps inside the letters as well as around the outside of the word.
That is a segmentation job rather than a cropping one. The model identifies the ink and clears everything else, including the enclosed spaces inside loops and letters. The result behaves like a stamp of the ink alone, which is what lets it sit correctly on a contract line or a letterhead.
Format and resolution for documents
Use PNG. Its transparency is supported by every PDF editor and word processor, and being lossless it stops thin pen strokes breaking up. Capture at a generous size — 300 dpi on a scanner, or filling most of the frame on a phone — because a signature enlarged after the fact looks soft and pixelated on a printed page. You can always scale a large signature down cleanly; scaling a small one up never looks right.
What affects signature cutouts
- Light pencil or fine ballpoint strokes have little contrast against the page and can come out broken or faded.
- Lined or coloured paper leaves the model deciding whether a printed rule is ink or background, and rules sometimes survive into the cutout.
- Shadows falling across the page in a phone photo can be read as part of the signature, adding a grey cast.
- Creased or crumpled paper produces uneven lighting, which shows up as patchy edges around the strokes.
Frequently Asked Questions
Related transparency workflows
Same tool, different starting point — these pages cover the specific case you are working on.
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All image tools
Resize, compress, convert formats and extract text — all in your browser.
Also compare your options
These side-by-side pages are the fastest way to see whether Clear Canvas fits your workflow.
Ready to Get Started?
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