mzucker/noteshrink
Convert scans of handwritten notes to beautiful, compact PDFs observed · 2026-08-28
Health v2 · maintenance only
32/100
- Activity 0
- Release rhythm 35
- Longevity 100
Flags: no_releases
How is this computed?
round(0.45*activity + 0.35*rhythm + 0.20*longevity); archived -> min(score, 10) — computed 2026-09-03. Adoption (stars, forks) is never an input.
- gap_med: n/a
- age_days: 3648
- days_rel: n/a
- days_push: 896
- n_releases_24m: 0
Adoption not part of the score
4841 stars · 352 forks observed · 2026-08-28
What it is AI-extracted, prompt v1, taxonomy v1, 2026-08-29, confidence not recorded
A Python command-line script that cleans up scans and photos of handwritten notes by separating background from ink, quantizing colors, and dramatically reducing file size before bundling pages into a compact PDF. It relies on NumPy, SciPy, Pillow, and ImageMagick and is invoked as a simple batch command over input images.
Use cases
- compress scans of handwritten notes into small pdfs
- clean up messy backgrounds on scanned notebook pages
- reduce the file size of scanned documents before sharing
- convert photos of whiteboard or lecture notes into readable pdfs
- remove gray or colored scanner background from page images
- batch process scanned page images into one pdf
When to choose
- You have scans or photos of handwritten notes with off-white backgrounds you want cleaned, contrast-enhanced, and shrunk
- You want a lightweight scriptable CLI to batch-convert scanned images into small PDFs for posting online
- File size matters more than searchable text, e.g. sharing lecture notes with a class
When to avoid
- You need OCR or searchable/selectable text in the output PDF - it only embeds cleaned images
- You prefer a GUI - it is a command-line script with many tunable numeric flags
- Your source material is dense printed or photographic content, where its palette-quantization approach is tuned for handwriting and may degrade detail
- You expect active maintenance or modern Python packaging - the project is largely dormant since its 2016 debut
Facets
cli-tool · maturity maintenance
image-processing pdf compression cli image-processing pdf files education developer-tools python cli windows cross-platform handwritten-notes scan-cleanup document-scanning color-quantization image-compression pdf-generation note-taking command-line linux macos
3 sources
- readme: https://github.com/mzucker/noteshrink · fetched 2026-08-28 · 715ee5d737f4
- homepage: https://mzucker.github.io/2016/09/20/noteshrink.html · fetched 2026-08-29 · 414301a4113b
- registry_pypi: https://pypi.org/pypi/noteshrink/json · fetched 2026-08-29 · c2b8651c324b
Member repositories
| Repository | Role | Health v2 |
|---|---|---|
| mzucker/noteshrink | main | 32 |
For agents
markdown · JSON · MCP: product_card(name="mzucker/noteshrink")
Data as of 2026-08-30T08:39:29.467469+00:00 · Report a problem