Although most images in industrial applications have fewer targets and simple image backgrounds, binarization is still a challenging task, and the corresponding results are usually unsatisfactory because of uneven illumination interference. In order to efficiently threshold images with nonuniform illumination, this paper proposes an efficient global binarization algorithm that estimates the inhomogeneous background surface of the original image constructed from the first k leading principal components in the Gaussian scale space (GSS). Then, we use the difference operator to extract the distinct foreground of the original image in which the interference of uneven illumination is effectively eliminated. Finally, the image can be effortlessly binarized by an existing global thresholding algorithm such as the Otsu method. In order to qualitatively and quantitatively verify the segmentation performance of the presented scheme, experiments were performed on a dataset collected from a nonuniform illumination environment. Compared with classical binarization methods, in some metrics, the experimental results demonstrate the effectiveness of the introduced algorithm in providing promising binarization outcomes and low computational costs.