LadyMin's Garden

Here’s an easy way to remove the white background on a scan of a signature using the magic wand tool. This is useful if you need to insert a signature into an electronic form such as an Acrobat or Word document.

1. Use a sharpie or dark pen on heavy paper to write the signature.
2. Scan as a black and white document with a resolution of 300 dpi and import into Photoshop.
3. Create a new layer by right-clicking on “Background” in the Layers Panel and select “Duplicate Layer”.
4. Delete the original background (the one with the padlock next to it). Right click, select delete.
5. Select the “Magic Wand” tool. Set the tolerance at about 32 and uncheck contiguous.
6. Using the Magic Wand tool, left-click anywhere on the white background. The signature will now have the “marching ants” around it.
7. Press the delete key. The white background will disappear and a checkered background appears.
8. Left-click with the Magic Wand anywhere on the background to stop the marching ants. The opaque background has now been removed.
9. Save the new file in PNG or GIF format by selecting File, Save As. These both support transparent backgrounds.

The signature file is now ready to be imported into a document such as Word or Acrobat and will have a transparent background.