Linking up two projects that are dedicated to facilitate the work of documentary scholars, this paper presents image processing algorithms tailored to the study of ancient documents and how they have been made available to the users through a portal that calls upon a web-service exploiting grid computational power. To that end, image processing algorithms were wrapped to fit into the National Grid Service (NGS) Uniform Execution Environment; the data model of an existing Virtual Research Environment (VRE-SDM) was extended; JSR-168 compliant portlets were developed to facilitate secure and seamless distributed image analysis; and a GridSAM interface between the portal and the NGS-installed algorithms was developed. The outcomes of the project include: a web-based application, a proof of concept for the usability of the VRE-SDM platform, an opportunity for wider dissemination for the image processing algorithms, and a proof of feasibility for the use of the NGS for Humanities applications.