In a couple of weeks I’ll be back in the lecture hall, and that means my iPad will once again be front and center while studying. A few things have changed with my setup in the six months break I’ve had due to weird course lengths, and I’m not yet sure how it will all work together yet. One thing I do know is that I will need to make a system for scanning documents, and that’s a task that I really don’t want to stop using Scanner Pro for.
The concept of scanning documents using mobile devices is one that many people never realize is possible. You essentially pair a decent camera with an app that crops, rotates, and enhances the image into something that looks like it was scanned, not photographed. There are many such apps for both Android and iOS, but after having tried most of them, Scanner Pro is the one I keep coming back to. The reason basically comes down to the ease of use and end result, and while most of these apps work in somewhat similar ways, Scanner Pro is the app that I personally think has the most intuitive interface, and produces the best results.
Unfortunately the app is iOS only, which means that if I want to use it to enhance images while using my Galaxy S II’s camera to take the images, I have to transfer the images rather than transferring a processed PDF document. Luckily I already have a system in place for doing that, as Dropsync is set up to send any pictures taken with my phone to Dropbox automatically. I can then grab then from there from the iPad, run them through Scanner Pro, and then export a processed PDF file into a note taking or PDF reading app.
I’ve run hundreds, if not thousands of images of documents through Scanner Pro, and it’s perhaps the one app I would choose to be ported to Android if anyone ever gave me that choice. More than that, the ability to use the camera on the iPad 3 directly in Scanner Pro would be a bigger factor for me than the screen resolution, should I ever decide to switch out my iPad 2.
Download: iTunes
For android, try camscanner. I refuse to use IOS so I don’t know how it compares but I can say that it is amazing on its own.
That’s what I have installed on my Android devices, but it’s far from as good as scanner pro in my opinion :/
What’s better about Scanner Pro? Just more accurate or is it certain features?
On my devices at least, camscanner isn’t that good. It has serious focus issues (which no other camera apps have), a image postview bug, it’s slow, and generally gives less than ideal results.
I have been using CamScanner Pro for some printed-out tests for an online course I’ve been taking this summer, and it works decently. I agree, though, it doesn’t have the best focus. I find myself using the regular camera app to take pictures and then importing the pictures into the pdf and doing the conversion like that, instead of taking the pictures directly in the CamScanner app. Avoids the focus issues. It’s certainly far from an ideal scanner app, does anyone have any recommendations for a good Android one?
You guys should try “Genius Scan” for Android…it’s a really good tool for scanning in whatever and the crop feature is better than a lot of other software is…:-)
Thanks for the tip, I tried it out, and it’s decent. It seems to do better on default settings than Camscanner, even if it lacks some much needed advanced settings. Still prefer Scanner Pro, but at least it’s a start