Guide
How to scan and resize your signature for exam applications
The signature is the upload people leave until last and then rush — and it is rejected almost as often as the photo. Exam portals treat the signature as a separate image with its own dimensions, file size and background rules. You do not need a scanner: a phone and a plain sheet of paper are enough. This guide shows how to capture a clean signature, get rid of the grey shadow that makes portals reject it, and resize it to the exam's limits.
1. Sign on plain white paper
Use an unlined, plain white sheet and a black or dark-blue pen with a reasonably thick tip. A gel or ballpoint pen that lays down a solid line photographs far better than a fine, faint one. Sign in your normal size in the middle of the page, leaving clear white space around the signature so you have room to crop. Most exams want a black or blue signature on a white background — check your exam's page for the exact rule.
2. Photograph it in flat, even light
Lay the paper on a flat surface near a window and take the photo from directly above, holding the phone parallel to the paper so the signature is not skewed. The single biggest cause of a “grey” signature is your own shadow falling across the page — move so the light comes from the side, not from behind you. Avoid the flash, which creates a bright hot-spot and hard shadows. Fill most of the frame with the paper so the signature is captured in as much detail as possible.
3. Crop tightly around the signature
Crop so the signature nearly fills the frame with only a thin white margin. This matters for two reasons: it removes distracting background, and it means that when the image is resized to the exam box, the signature is large and legible rather than a tiny mark floating in white space. Keep the crop rectangular — most exams want a landscape signature strip, roughly 3:1 wide.
4. Clean up the background
Phone photos of paper often come out slightly grey or cream rather than pure white, and portals that check for a “white background” can reject that. Increasing brightness and contrast pushes the paper to clean white while keeping the ink dark. Do not overdo it, or thin strokes disappear. When you process a signature through Exam Photo Toolkit, this happens as part of the resize so the strokes stay solid and the background reads as white.
5. Resize to the exam's dimensions and KB limit
Signatures usually have a smaller file-size cap than photos — often in the 10–20 KB range — and their own pixel dimensions (for example 140 × 60). Because a signature is mostly plain white with a few dark strokes, it compresses to a very small file easily, so hitting the limit is rarely a problem once the dimensions are right. Pick your exam and the tool will apply the correct signature dimensions and size cap automatically — see the full size requirements guide if you want to understand the numbers.
Signature dos and don'ts
- Do sign in a size close to how you sign officially — an exaggerated giant signature looks nothing like your real one.
- Don't use pencil; it photographs faint and grey and is frequently rejected.
- Don't include lines, margins or printed text from the paper in the crop.
- Do keep a copy — the same clean signature usually works across multiple exam applications.
Fix it in the browser
Exam Photo Toolkit handles the photo and the signature side by side, applying each exam's exact rules, and does all the processing on your own device — nothing is uploaded to a server. Start from your exam on the home page, and see our companion guide on why uploads get rejected if a portal has already turned yours down.