The in-plane fiber orientation distribution has a decisive impact on paper mechanical and dimensional properties (e.g., tensile stiffness, hygroexpansion). It is usually estimated offline through relatively expensive bench instrumentation such as diffusion-based optical methods and ultrasonic devices. In this work we present an alternative methodology that is fast, portable, inexpensive and able to provide the complete surface polar fiber orientation profile. The proposed technology combines an image acquisition setup, consisting of a digital camera with a low angle illumination system, with the gradient-segmentation method (GSM), a robust image analysis algorithm. This camera-GSM methodology presented high internal consistency, accurately identifying the angles of samples subjected to known rotations at the imaging step. The methodology also produced comparable results to the TSO (tensile stiffness orientation) technique, used as reference. The methodology is easily transferable to plant operation, including for the online assessment of fiber orientation.