The signature upload trips up more applicants than the photograph does, mostly because nobody explains what a scanned signature is supposed to look like.
What the portal expects
Almost every Indian exam asks for the same thing:
- Your signature in black ink on plain white paper
- In your normal running handwriting, not block capitals
- Clear, not blurred, and not too small
- Saved as a JPG, usually between 10 KB and 20 KB
- At a specific size, often around 140 x 60 pixels, or a measurement like 6 x 2 cm
Your notification will give the exact numbers. These are only the common ones.
Getting a clean signature
Draw a box first. On a blank white sheet, draw a light rectangle roughly 6 cm wide and 2 cm tall in pencil, then sign inside it with a black pen. The box keeps your signature at the right proportions, and you can crop the pencil lines out.
Use a proper black pen. A gel or ballpoint pen gives a solid dark line. A very fine pen can disappear when the image is compressed.
Sign as you normally would. This matters more than neatness. Your signature has to match the one you use on the day of the exam and on your documents. Do not invent a fancier version for the form.
Sign it more than once. Take three or four attempts on the same sheet and pick the clearest.
Capturing it
Photograph the sheet in good daylight, holding the camera directly above and parallel to the paper. Tilting the phone makes the signature slant or stretch.
Avoid casting your own shadow across the paper. Standing beside a window rather than under a ceiling light usually solves this.
If your phone has a document scan mode, use it. It flattens the perspective and brightens the paper automatically.
Cropping and sizing
Crop tightly to the signature itself, leaving a small white margin. Do not leave large empty areas of paper around it, because when the portal shrinks the image, your signature becomes tiny and may be rejected as unclear.
Then resize to the exact dimensions and file size your notification states.
Why signatures get rejected
- Blue ink when black was required
- Block capitals instead of a running signature
- Too small in the frame, so it looks blurry after resizing
- Grey or shadowed paper, which reads as unclear
- Crooked or tilted because the camera was at an angle
- Wrong file size, either over the maximum or under the minimum
Sizing it correctly
Our signature resizer hits the exact pixel dimensions and the KB range at the same time, which is the part most tools get wrong. Everything runs in your browser, so your signature is never uploaded.