One exemplary method of the present invention is for background intensity correction of a scan of pixel values of a document, wherein the scan has at least one background pixel area and at least one non-background pixel area. The method includes segmenting the scan into the at least one background pixel area and the at least one non-background pixel area. The method also includes calculating a gray background pixel value of at least a portion of the scan. The method also includes compensating only the pixel values of the at least one background pixel area for background intensity using the calculated gray background pixel value.