Staff Selection Commission notices sum up the signature upload in a single line: a scanned signature in JPEG, 10 to 20 KB, measuring roughly 6.0 cm across and 2.0 cm tall. That describes a strip whose width is three times its height. A photo of the paper you signed is the opposite, an upright page several thousand pixels high with your name as a small dark patch near the middle. Shrink it without changing its shape and the ink turns into a thin scribble lost in white, which is exactly the miniature signature the notices say they will reject.
This page is already set for the strip: centimetres as the unit, 6 and 2 in the boxes, 200 in the DPI field and “Crop to fill” selected. Add a picture and it is trimmed evenly to the 3:1 shape, scaled to 472 × 157 pixels and saved with 200 DPI recorded inside the file. It fixes the shape and the size, not the weight, so the last step is always a glance at the KB figure on the result; the 10–20KB signature page deals with anything outside the band.
How to use it
- Write your usual signature on a clean white sheet using a dark pen, about as large as you would sign a cheque, and keep the line of writing level; the Constable (GD) notice asks for a horizontally aligned signature.
- Photograph it beside a window in daylight, phone held flat above the sheet so neither your hand nor the phone casts a shadow, then use the crop tool to cut a loose band around the ink whose width is about triple its height.
- Add that band here and it is resized at once. Applying for Constable (GD)? Change the DPI to 300 and press Resize again. Going by the 4.0 cm figure in the annexure instead? Type 4 in the width box.
- Look along the left and right edges of the preview for clipped letters, then read the KB on the download button: a file between 10 and 20 KB can go straight into the form, anything else goes to the 10–20KB signature page.
Signature size in the SSC notices: cm, DPI and pixels
Six recent Staff Selection Commission notices, for Junior Engineer 2026, Stenographer 2026, CHSL 2026, CGL 2026, Constable (GD) 2026 and MTS 2025, set the same rule. The file is a scanned signature in “JPEG/JPG format (10 to 20 KB)”, and its image dimension should be “about 6.0 cm (width) x 2.0 cm (height)”. Blurred or miniature signatures are rejected summarily, a rule the notices do not apply to applicants who went through Aadhaar Based Authentication.
Three details are easy to miss. In both the CGL and the CHSL notice, 6.0 cm appears in the main paragraph and again in the summary of instructions, yet the Part-II online application annexure prints “about 4.0 cm (width) x 2.0 cm (height)”. The Constable (GD) 2026 notice is the only one to name a density: its upload checklist reads “About 6.0 cm (width) X 2.0 cm (height) at a resolution of 300 DPI”, adds that the signature should be horizontally aligned, and names “miniature” signatures as the major reason for rejection. And none of the notices gives a pixel size.
Pixels follow from the centimetres and the DPI. With the DPI set to 200, the 6.0 × 2.0 cm strip turns into 472 × 157 pixels, and with 300 into 709 × 236; the 4.0 × 2.0 cm reading gives 315 × 157 or 472 × 236 respectively. The 140 × 60 figure that many signature tools list for SSC comes from IBPS and SBI notices, which really are written in pixels; it is smaller than any of these and a different shape from the SSC strip.
Grey paper and shadows: why a phone photo fails
Most troublesome SSC signatures begin as a phone photo taken at a desk under a ceiling light. The paper comes out grey rather than white, darker at one end, often with the shadow of a hand or the phone lying across it. Resizing keeps every one of those tones, because this tool changes the size and nothing else; it will not whiten the paper or darken the ink. Two problems follow. A grainy grey background is expensive for a JPEG to store, so the same 472 × 157 strip can weigh around twice as much on grey paper as on white and slip past 20 KB, more easily still at 300 DPI. And thin ink on a grey ground goes soft and faint once compressed, which is close to what an examiner would call blurred.
The fix happens before the picture reaches this page. Sign with a gel or felt-tip pen rather than a fine ballpoint, so the strokes stay solid when the whole strip is only 157 pixels high. Shoot next to a window with the light falling from the side, phone parallel to the paper and flash off. If your phone’s camera or notes app has a document-scan mode, use it, since it flattens the page to white and squares it up; a flatbed scanner set to 200 or 300 DPI is better still. Finally, fill the strip: a signature that spans most of the band’s width and height after cropping is far less likely to be read as a miniature one.
Frequently asked questions
- What is the SSC signature size in pixels?
- No SSC notice states one. The notices give centimetres, and the pixel count depends on the DPI you pick: the 6.0 × 2.0 cm strip comes to 472 × 157 pixels with 200 in the DPI box, or 709 × 236 with 300. Both are 3:1 strips, while a 140 × 60 file matches neither the shape nor the size the notices describe.
- Should I resize my SSC signature at 200 or 300 DPI?
- Use 300 if you are filling in the Constable (GD) form, because its upload checklist names that figure. The CGL, CHSL, MTS, Stenographer and JE notices name no DPI, so the 200 preset is a fair choice there: it gives a lighter file, which leaves more room when the paper is not perfectly white.
- The notice says 6.0 cm in one place and 4.0 cm in another. Which should I follow?
- Both figures carry the word “about”, and 6.0 cm is the one repeated in the main paragraph and the summary, so this page starts there. The height is 2.0 cm either way. To follow the annexure instead, type 4 in the width box; you get a 2:1 strip rather than 3:1, and the ink still needs to fill it.
- Will the resized signature be a JPG file?
- A JPG, or an iPhone HEIC, comes back as JPG, which is what the SSC form asks for. A PNG stays PNG, so pass a PNG signature through the PNG to JPG converter before uploading it. Hidden camera data from the phone, GPS position included, is left behind rather than carried over.
- My strip came out under 10 KB or over 20 KB. What now?
- Take the file to the 10–20KB signature page. It adjusts JPG quality first and touches the pixel size only when quality alone cannot reach the band, so the strip normally keeps its 472 × 157 pixels. Its output carries no DPI value; if your notice names one, write it back afterwards with the DPI converter, which leaves the pixels alone.
- Can this page whiten the paper or make faint ink darker?
- No. Brightness, contrast and background colour stay exactly as they were in the photo. A dull grey signature needs a new picture in better light, or a pass through your phone’s document-scan mode, before it comes here.