The Best iOS Scanner Apps To Scan Documents & Images.
The first commercial Xerox machine was about the size of two washing machines, weighed about 650 pounds, and was prone to overheating.
However, it was a godsend for the secretaries as they no longer needed to use lousy copy paper or visit third-party outside printers to make quality copies. Its core technology later moved to printers and scanners, and has remained so since the 1930s.
Smartphones have simplified these once cumbersome workplace tasks and become productive machines that provide a fast and easy scanner on the go for managing your paper documents. What was once an expensive but now elite tool has now become mainstream thanks to mobile scanners.
There are many scanner apps to choose from for your iOS device, but we’ve narrowed it down by highlighting the features we find most useful. These include optical character recognition (OCR), image quality, ease of use, a variety of formats and sharing capabilities, security, editing and annotation features, and a reasonable price.
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Scanbot
Scanbot
Scanbot combines an easy-to-use layout, excellent image quality with robust OCR results and sharing capabilities. It’s also a great tool for working with PDFs, whether you want to sign it, add notes, or highlight some important parts. You can even reorder, delete, or add pages, accurately crop scanned images and correct geometric distortion.
It does not perform OCR in the cloud and does not send your data to its servers, so your personal information is protected from unauthorized authorities and hackers. It also provides PDF encryption, so you can password protect your files.
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You can set up automatic cropping, rotation, apply filters and give the scanned file a name, but after saving the scanned images, you cannot go back and change the filter; you need to scan again. You can then share it via email or as a TXT file and automatically upload all scanned images to cloud services including Dropbox or Google Drive, and note-taking apps like Evernote.
Other handy features include a dedicated multi-page scan mode, Touch ID passcode and app lock, Wunderlist integration, and automatic text recognition in 60 languages.
However, Scanbot doesn’t have presets for different content types. For example, if you scan a business card, it doesn’t automatically add the person to your contacts. Moreover, it cannot reliably recognize handwritten text. Instead, it uses the Actions function to analyze the OCR results and extract email addresses, URLs, and other items that require action.
Microsoft Office Lens
Microsoft Office Lens
This free scanner application is designed to create images of notes, documents and whiteboards saved in Word, PDF or PowerPoint formats. Office Lens is ad-free and allows you to save scanned images to the cloud via OneDrive or OneNote.
Its user interface is simple and easy to use, although you need to have Word installed on your iOS device to access the scan results and you can only share files within the Microsoft Office family of applications and services.
In addition to the usual image filters, Office Lens has discrete modes for scanning business cards and whiteboards with crisp and useful results. However, manual framing does not increase the corners, making it harder to get accurate results.
CamScanner
CamScanner
This business class scanning app can scan a variety of documents, from receipts to invoices, contracts, etc. It converts scanned files to PDFs that are automatically uploaded to cloud storage services such as Dropbox, Google Drive, Evernote, OneDrive and Box. You can also invite group members to view and comment on scanned images, but they must have user accounts.
Its advanced editing feature allows you to add watermarks and annotations to documents for a more professional look, and you can also add passwords to documents for increased security.
You can download it for free, or upgrade to one of the premium plans available with 10GB of storage and other useful features like batch uploading documents and sending document links with password protection.
Evernote scannable
Evernote Scannable
This powerful little scanner app will scan whatever you put in front of it and send it to your preferred storage or Evernote account.
It also allows you to share scanned images with other people, but it does so intelligently. For example, if you are in a business meeting and have shared scan access to your calendar, you can scan the minutes of the meeting and Scannable will ask if you want to share images with attendees if they are listed. We invite you to the meeting.
You can scan receipts, business cards, sketches, paper or multi-page documents, and Scannable will automatically save and organize your scans, automatically crop them to remove backgrounds, and enhance them to make text readable.
It also automatically adds contacts from scanned business cards to the contact card on your device, and you can call or email that person or visit their website with a single tap.
FineScanner
FineScanner
This is an iOS-only scanning app that scans text in 193 languages ??using OCR. It can scan printed and handwritten text and work with 12 file formats, including PDF, DOCX and TXT, while preserving the original document formatting.
Its easy-to-use annotation tools let you add notes to text and signatures, and with the BookScan function, you can easily digitize books. FineScanner can also remove background and automatically enhance the final image to make graphics or text stand out.
Scan results can be sent via email or saved to cloud storage such as Dropbox, Google Drive, iCloud Drive, and Evernote. The app is free, but offers in-app purchases if you need more features or additional storage.
Mobile scanning apps can end up where your physical scanner doesn’t like a business lunch or school library. Plus, they are a great temporary solution if you only have a few documents to scan from time to time and are easy to share without heavy equipment.
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