1. Just trace around the signature with the pen tool to make a path. That way you can make it as smooth, or include any bumps, as you like.
2.Then create a shape from the path
Bottom is original (click to zoom)
Now here is a real "off the wall" alternative:
I used my phone with the Adobe Capture app to photograph the signature direct from the screen in post 1.
I then used the app to crop it and turned smoothing on in capture - and saved it to my library. That took seconds.
It immediately appeared in my library in Photoshop as an SVG file.
/t5/photoshop-ecosystem-discussions/smoothing-a-rough-jagged-signature/m-p/9536740#M133854 Nov 29, 2017 Nov 29, 2017
Copy link to clipboard
Here is a quick cleaned up version. I have to confess that I did not use Photoshop or Illustrator for this, but OpenToonz (animation software) because it has an excellent (drawn) bitmap line art to vector conversion and nice vector clean-up tools. OpenToonz is meant for this type of hand-drawn line cleanup, and does it quickly and nicely without too much user intervention.
I tried Illustrator, but it was too finicky in this case. Someone here can probably come up with a Photoshop-only solution.
Anyway, the basic thought process behind this is to convert the original to a vector version with smooth curves without too much detail retained, then use smooth and thickness tools to correct the major issues.
