How to clean up backgrounds on old, scanned photos?

I have recently unearthed some old church records regarding my ancestors—truly fascinating stuff—and I am looking to print them out. However, there is a significant hurdle: the background behind the text is this incredibly messy, brownish discoloration. If I were to attempt a print job as is, I would likely exhaust all my ink cartridges just trying to replicate that stained background! Is there any way to clean this up digitally—perhaps using Photoshop or some other software?
Does anyone happen to have any suggestions or techniques in mind?
I am attaching a sample here so you can see exactly what I am dealing with.

image

Honestly, you could probably fix this without much trouble if you've got Photoshop, but it really all boils down to how crappy the scan quality is... and looking at what you guys posted here, it’s basically impossible to save without a massive amount of grunt work.

Example one:



I just converted this to grayscale and messed around with the brightness, contrast, and gamma correction—did it all right in Windows Photo Viewer, though I guess you could use anything elsewhere.

Example two:



I played around with the fuzzy select tool in GIMP—could have used Photoshop too—but honestly, I didn't really feel like manually erasing all those tiny dots and filling in the gaps inside the letters.

All in all, I probably wasted about 30 minutes on both of these—someone more skilled could likely get a better result in way less time.

Wow, truly impressive—I have no idea how you pulled that off. I actually have Photoshop installed myself, though I suspect I might struggle to match your results if I give it a shot.

In Photoshop, there’s a tool called the Magic Wand—I used it to grab everything surrounding the text so I could just delete the rest and leave only the words behind. It might need a little more cleanup, though. You really have to play around with the Tolerance setting when you're using that tool to get it right.

If you search for "Photoshop Magic Wand" on YouTube, there are tons of videos out there—I'm just not quite sure which one is worth watching.

Just download CamScanner onto your phone. In my experience, it’s the fastest way to get things done. I use it for all my paperwork

Antomon 👍 man...