How to clean a scan of handwriting?

[Ofnuts]

(01-07-2018, 06:28 PM)Gerenuk Wrote: I'd like to clean up a short piece of handwriting (like a signature; see attachment). I found some kind of thresholding in Gimp, but ended up cleaning a lot with the eraser.

Could you please suggest an approach / tools that seems best to get a single color version of the writing only?

Ideally it should be the lines only, no stray dots, a fairly smooth edge of the written lines and in the end a single color stroke.

Try this:

• Layer>Transparency>Add alpha channel (we are going to play with transparency)
  
• Layer>New layer and fill with white. Drag to bottom of stack
  
• Layer>Mask>Add layer mask. Initialize to "Grayscaled copy of layer", and "Invert mask".
  
• Then start the "Levels" tool, and click on the picture. At that point you will be working on the layer rmask
  

Then:

   

The white background that was add initially isn't stricly necessary (even if it gives you a better idea of how things will look). You can remove it an export to PNG if you want the
signature on a transparent background.