Draw your signature and place it on your PDF document.
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Choose a fileFusionPDF lets you sign a PDF by drawing your signature on screen, typing it, or uploading a signature image. The signature is embedded as an image overlay on the page using pdf-lib, running entirely in your browser, with no file upload required. According to Adobe's 2023 Digital Trends report, over 60% of knowledge workers sign documents digitally at least once a week.
Open the tool and load your PDF by dragging it into the drop area or clicking "Choose a file." Once loaded, the signature panel appears below the file info. Draw, type, or upload your signature. Use the position grid to choose where it lands on the page. Set the size and opacity, choose which pages to sign, then click "Apply signature" to download your signed PDF immediately.
The whole process takes under a minute for a single-page document. No account creation, no email confirmation, no waiting for a server to process your file.
Draw with mouse or touch: use the canvas to draw your signature freehand. This works on desktop with a mouse and on mobile or tablet with a finger or stylus. Choose from black, blue, or red ink. The drawn signature captures your natural pen style better than a typed alternative.
Type your name: if you prefer a clean, consistent result, typing your name and rendering it in a script font produces a legible signature that looks intentional rather than scanned. This option is faster when signing multiple documents in a session.
Upload a signature image (PNG or JPG): if you already have a cropped image of your handwritten signature, upload it directly. Transparent PNGs work best as they blend cleanly onto the page without a white background box around the signature.
This is the question that matters most for most users. Under the US ESIGN Act (2000) and the EU eIDAS Regulation (910/2014), an electronic signature is legally valid when both parties intend to sign and consent to the electronic process. The law does not require a specific technology, only demonstrable intent.
FusionPDF creates a Simple Electronic Signature (SES), the lowest tier defined under eIDAS. SES is valid for the majority of everyday documents: employment acknowledgements, consent forms, internal approvals, NDAs between known parties, and personal agreements. It's the same category used by most email-based signature workflows.
SES is not appropriate for every situation. It is not a Qualified Electronic Signature (QES), which requires identity verification through a trust service provider and carries the strongest legal presumption across EU member states. For high-stakes contracts, property transactions, or documents that may face serious legal challenge, use a certified service such as DocuSign or Adobe Sign. Those services create a verifiable audit trail linking the signer's identity to the document.
For everyday documents where the relationship between parties is already established, an image-based signature from this tool is generally sufficient. If in doubt, consult a lawyer in your jurisdiction.
When you click "Apply signature," the tool rasterizes your drawn or uploaded signature into a PNG image. pdf-lib then embeds this image as a Form XObject inside the PDF structure and draws it at the specified coordinates on the target page or pages.
The result is a flattened overlay: the signature image sits on top of the existing page content, anchored at the chosen position. Once the PDF is saved and downloaded, the signature cannot be moved, resized, or removed without generating a new version of the document. This is the same technique used by many commercial signing tools for Simple Electronic Signatures.
The original text, images, and structure of the PDF remain intact underneath the signature layer. The tool does not modify the document's text content, metadata, or form fields.
Signed documents frequently contain sensitive personal or contractual information: employment terms, medical consent, financial agreements. When you use a server-based signing tool, the unencrypted document travels to a third-party server before you receive a signed copy back. That server may log, cache, or retain the file depending on the provider's data policies.
With a browser-based approach, the PDF never leaves your device. The signing computation runs in your browser tab, and the output downloads directly to your machine. No intermediary touches the document. For confidential or sensitive documents, this distinction is meaningful, not theoretical.
Read more about how to sign PDF documents without sharing them on our guide to signing PDFs for free.
For a complete guide to signing PDFs — including legal validity under the ESIGN Act and eIDAS — read our guide to signing PDFs free online →