My preferred app for scanning: Scanner Pro (iOS)
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
Click here to see what apps I prefer for other tasks
