Comparisons · ScanTailor Family
ScanTailor Forks Explained: Original, Featured, Enhanced, Universal, Experimental, Advanced
Six names, one ancestor, and a lot of confusion in forum threads. This page explains what each ScanTailor variant is and — checked against GitHub in October 2026 — which ones are actually alive today.
Why So Many Forks?
ScanTailor is open source, so when the original project’s development slowed, community developers forked it to add the features they needed. Some forks specialized, some merged others, and one line — Advanced — eventually absorbed most of the family’s work. The names below are the ones you will meet in guides, package managers and forum advice, much of it years out of date.
The Family, One by One
| Variant | What it is | Status (checked Oct 2026) |
|---|---|---|
| Original | The first ScanTailor, created by Joseph Artsimovich in 2007. Defined the six-stage pipeline every fork still uses. | Repository archived; last release 0.9.12.1 in 2016. Historical. |
| Featured | A community variant known for additions such as vertical dragging of dewarping lines, square picture zones and marginal dewarping (as documented in the Advanced README). | No standalone maintained repository found on GitHub; survives in package archives from the mid-2010s. Its features live on inside Advanced. |
| Enhanced | A community variant known for reworked page detection, deviation handling, picture shapes and improved auto margins (per the Advanced README). | Same as Featured: historical on its own, merged into Advanced and Universal. |
| Universal | A fork by trufanov-nok that, in its repository’s own words, is “based on Enhanced+Featured+Master versions of ST”, with thumbnail-view improvements and bug fixes. | Repository still receives commits (last push April 2026), but it publishes no GitHub releases — you would build it yourself. |
| Experimental | A separate experimental line maintained under the ImageProcessing-ElectronicPublications organization on GitHub. | Actively released: version 1.2026.08.08 (August 2026) ships a Windows ZIP and installer plus Linux packages. |
| Advanced | The fork that merges Featured and Enhanced, adds its own features (multi-threading, new threshold methods, oblique deskew, relative paths) and fixes. Current home: the ScanTailor-Advanced organization on GitHub. | Actively released: v1.1.1 for Windows (April 2026) and v1.2.1 for Linux (May 2026). |
Status column verified against each project’s GitHub repository and releases in October 2026. Smaller derivatives exist too (for example a “Deviant” fork based on the Universal/Experimental families); they are niche and not covered here.
How the Family Fits Together
The lineage is simpler than the name list suggests. The Original came first. Featured and Enhanced branched off it with different improvements. Universal combined Enhanced, Featured and the master line. Advanced merged Featured and Enhanced directly, incorporated Universal fixes, and kept going — it is the line whose README documents all the others, because it absorbed them. Experimental is the outlier: a parallel line pursuing its own ideas, still releasing, but not the merge point of the family. For a direct feature comparison of the two ends of the main line, see Advanced vs the original.
Which One Should You Install in 2026?
Default answer: ScanTailor Advanced. It carries the merged Featured/Enhanced feature set, receives current releases for Windows and Linux, and is the version this site’s tutorials and download page are built around.
The reasonable exception is Experimental. Its most recent release (August 2026) is actually newer than Advanced’s latest, and if you are comfortable running an explicitly experimental line — and checking its results carefully — it is a legitimate choice. Universal is for users happy to build from source. Featured, Enhanced and the Original are for historians and legacy projects, not new work.
Release dates and timelines for the Advanced line are collected on our version history page.
FAQ
Are Featured and Enhanced still downloadable?
Copies survive in software archives and old package repositories, but neither has a maintained home or current releases. Their features were merged into ScanTailor Advanced, which is the practical way to use them today.
Is Experimental newer than Advanced?
Its latest release is more recent (August 2026 vs May 2026 for Advanced’s v1.2.1). Newer is not the same as safer for production work, though — Experimental is, by name and positioning, the line where ideas are tried out. Advanced remains the recommended default for most users.
Which fork do this site’s guides cover?
ScanTailor Advanced. The six-stage pipeline is shared across the family, so most guidance transfers, but version-specific details, downloads and fixes here all refer to Advanced.