: Removing grain from handwritten signature I've got a scanned signature that I'm trying to clean up. I was able to use levels to remove some of the grain surrounding the handwriting, but I cannot

@Turnbaugh909

Select the white background, invert the selection, grow the selection by 1 pixel, and then shrink. Take the result, push into illustrator or Inkscape, and convert to a path:

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@Bryan765

To me Photoshop + Illustrator combination works best:

Photoshop:


Go to: Image > Image Size...> and resize it to 200%. The resize scale depends on the image and is to make sure that the shape blur used in the next step is not too big.
Go to: Filter > Blur > Shape Blur... >. Use minimum blur radius (5px), select Shapes object group from a side menu and select a filled circle shape and blur it:





Go to: Image > Adjustments > Threshold... > and select the value that gives optimum smoothness and thickness. As a result you'll have a sharp-edged graphics, without shadows. If we resize the artwork back to original size we would have:



Now, if we want the edges even smoother:

Illustrator:


Import the still resized artwork into Illustrator.
Go to Object > Image Trace > Make. These default settings worked well for me:





Go to: File > Save for Web... > and export to match the original size / format.


The result is:

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@Eichhorn212

Here's what I managed using GIMP; I believe all the steps should be possible in Photoshop too:


(optional) Convert image to pure black and white, using Color > Threshold with the threshold at 128.
Apply a very small amount of Gaussian blur; I got best results with a radius of 0.6 px, but you may wish to play with different radii.
Apply Color > Threshold again, this time choosing a higher threshold, so that any white pixels surrounded by enough black pixels in the original picture get filled in.


Result:

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@Murray976

Copy layer
Set blend mode of copy to Multiply
Filter > Blur > Gaussian Blur set this to 1 pixel.
Duplicate blur/multiply layer 3 or 4 more times.





Choose Merge Visible from the Layer Panels menu
Filter > Other > Maximum - set this to 1 pixel.





Image > Adjustments > Levels to tweak things a bit more....




You will probably need to go in with a small brush and draw the hole in the "dot" of the lowercase i. (which I did not do)

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