Magazine articles, important documents, receipts, and whatnot – paper is still the most commonly used storage and distribution medium, and it's not going anywhere in the foreseeable future. The problem with paper is that it tends to pile up and take up all available space at an astonishing speed. Worse yet, every time you discard documents you think you no longer need, there is a risk of throwing away something important.

Fortunately, tools like Scan Tailor and Paperwork provide a solution to this conundrum. Using these applications, you can set up an efficient system for turning paper documents into a searchable library of scanned and cleaned up files.

Processing Scanned Pages with Scan Tailor

Most mainstream Linux distributions come with a scanning utility preinstalled. Ubuntu, for example, ships with Simple Scan, a no-frills tool that's more than adequate for all but the most complex scanning tasks. But scanning documents is only half of the battle. In most cases, you might want to clean up and tweak scanned pages, and this is where Scan Tailor [1] comes into the picture (Figure 1). This application is designed for post-processing scanned pages, and it allows you to split and deskew pages, add and remove borders, as well as generate cleaned up files. Keep in mind, though, that Scan Tailor is not a scanning application, so you need to scan pages before you start using the application.

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