# mzucker/noteshrink

Convert scans of handwritten notes to beautiful, compact PDFs

Repository: https://github.com/mzucker/noteshrink
Canonical: https://ross.abutalabs.com/products/noteshrink
Homepage: https://mzucker.github.io/2016/09/20/noteshrink.html
Language: Python
License: MIT
License Family: permissive
Last push: 2024-03-20T22:27:57+00:00

## Health v2 (maintenance only)
Score: 32/100 (v2, computed 2026-09-03T02:20:16.233290+00:00)
- activity 0, release rhythm 35, longevity 100
- inputs: {"age_days": 3648, "days_push": 896, "days_rel": null, "gap_med": null, "n_releases_24m": 0}
- flags: no_releases
- formula: round(0.45*activity + 0.35*rhythm + 0.20*longevity); archived -> min(score, 10)

## Adoption (not part of the score)
Stars 4841, forks 352 (observed 2026-08-28T04:09:01.285636+00:00)

## What it is
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
- artifact type: cli-tool
- maturity: maintenance
- function: image-processing, pdf, compression, cli
- domain: image-processing, pdf, files, education, developer-tools
- platform: python, cli, windows, cross-platform
- tags: handwritten-notes, scan-cleanup, document-scanning, color-quantization, image-compression, pdf-generation, note-taking, command-line, linux, macos

## Member repositories
- mzucker/noteshrink (main) score 32

## Provenance
- Observed fields: from GitHub, fetched 2026-08-28T04:09:01.285636+00:00.
- Health v2: computed from the inputs above; adoption is never an input.
- Inferred fields (summary, facets, guidance): AI-extracted, prompt v1, taxonomy v1, on 2026-08-29T18:18:28.062071+00:00, confidence not recorded.
  - readme: https://github.com/mzucker/noteshrink (fetched 2026-08-28T04:09:01.285636+00:00, sha 715ee5d737f4)
  - homepage: https://mzucker.github.io/2016/09/20/noteshrink.html (fetched 2026-08-29T09:01:11.069576+00:00, sha 414301a4113b)
  - registry_pypi: https://pypi.org/pypi/noteshrink/json (fetched 2026-08-29T09:01:11.079233+00:00, sha c2b8651c324b)
- Data as of 2026-08-30T08:39:29.467469+00:00.