1. A method for processing grayscale image data to improve image quality in a digital document reproduction device, comprising: providing an original document to a digital reproduction system having a raster input scanner as its image source and a xerographic digital printer as its output device; scanning said original document using said raster input scanner to obtain an image scan of said original document, said raster input scanner converting said image scan to grayscale image data representing an image of a scanning area that has said original document captured inside; detecting skew in at least one initially scanned line of said image scan by analyzing a subset of said grayscale image data that excludes substantially all of said grayscale image data that does not correspond to said lead edge such that only the grayscale data that represents the lead edge of said original document is processed to detect skew for the entire document image and to determine the appropriate amount of skew correction to be applied; applying said determined amount of skew correction to said grayscale image data, said correction being based upon the skew detected in said initially scanned line with at least a portion of said skew being eliminated from said grayscale image data in real-time; converting said skew corrected grayscale image data to an output device format for use by a digital output device; storing said output device formatted image data to a memory; eliminating all of said output device formatted image data corresponding to data positioned outside a perimeter of said original document; and printing said output device formatted image data using said output device.