I’ve gone paper-free a long time ago. I either switched to e-bills or scan them as soon as I get one in the mail. I then process the scanned PDF files with Adobe Acrobat to make them searchable through OCR and store them in a folder on my hard-drive.
The only bills, papers and documents that I keep on paper are:
- Original contracts
- The two most recent bills/statements of everything
- One original bill for each address that I have lived in in my life, in case I need to prove that I have lived at that address.
For all the rest I use my trusted HP Officejet. Sometimes I get lazy though. Like when I find a bill lying on a kitchen chair. I see it, get the urge to scan it and tear it apart but it’s just a hassle to go upstairs, turn the scanner on, wake my Mac up, fire up Preview, scan the document, process it. Yuk.
I’ve been looking for an iPhone app that could scan papers for a while and to tell you the truth I knew the app I wanted. For some reason or another I put the purchase off for a few months (no, I’m not that cheap… it’s just that I sometimes realize I have already too many apps). Anyway, last Saturday I decided to finally buy TurboScan by Pixoft.
There are two versions of this app. The one with OCR (character recognition) at CAN$ 3.99 and the one without it, selling for CAN$ 1.99. I decided to go for the latter as I thought that a CAN$ 3.99 app cannot perform like my trusted Adobe Acrobat. I prefer to do the post-processintg on my Mac.
The app is very simple to use. You can create a pdf file from:
- Taking a picture
- Using SureScan 3x which basically uses the iPhone camera to take three picture in short succession to get a better image.
- The camera roll
Once you have taken the digital image of your document you can effortlessly resize the portion to scan by adjusting the corners of the image. The cool thing is that as soon as you start dragging the corners of the picture taken, the display splits in two, showing you in one of the two halves a magnified image of the corner you’re dragging allowing you to precisely choose the right place to cut your document.
The app options let you:
- Make the scanned image darker or lighter
- Go for a colored or B&W image
- Rotate the image
Once you’ve completed that step you can choose whether to add a second page to the PDF file or:
- Send it via email.
- Email it to yourself
- Email as JPEG image
- Open PDF in…
- Save to Camera Roll
The app settings allow you to:
- Choose the default paper size
- Customize the Email to myself function by setting a specified email address, type of file to send, email subject, email body text
- Choose the attachment file size
- Set the default color mode, either B&W or color
The options are plentiful, yet the app is very simple to use. In my tests the scanned images are extremely clear and ready to be processed with your favorite PDF editor.
Turbo Scan is an invaluable tool for all of us that travel a lot, for whoever doesn’t own a scanner or too lazy to use one. The price is just right for such a useful app and I can definitely recommend it. You can download it
(Edited on 24th April 2012: You might be interested in Genius Scan+ too. You can find my review here.)
Great program for small files(5 pages or less). Program usefulness is limited by file size. Email failures occur with files larger than 5MB on yahoo and gmail(usual file size limit is 25MB).
Interesting, I didn’t know that because I’ve never created such huge documents. Good catch, thanks.
How does one avoid camera flash from being part of the photo? I have tried without overhead light, a different room with natural light, all with the same a white flash somewhere on the photo. Using the app on an Iphone.
Nick
Hi Nick,
Thanks for the comment. When in camera mode you can toggle the flash on/off by tapping on the flash icon on the bottom right of the screen.
Does that work for you? If that should not, the best chance to solve the problem is to contact TurboScan support from their website at http://turboscanapp.com/
Best regards,
Pietro
That works, so simple, thank you, Nick
You’re more than welcome. Glad it worked!
Pietro
Just for info, I recently had the large file size problem where emailing failed. However, I have Dropbox on my iPhone and was able to upload the file by taking the ‘open in Dropbox’ option.
Thanks for the info. Can you consistently reproduce the problem?
Every time I take a pic and after I adjust the size the preview screen is white. I have tried with and without flash and nothing helps.
I suggest contacting TurboScan support.
Hi, I am considering camscanner or turboscan. Which one do you prefer? Which quality is better?
Hi Alex,
I don’t use either at the moment. A few weeks ago I happily switched to Scanbot Pro. Give it a try.