by The Grizzly Labs has been recently featured in the so I thought of testing it for my readers.
I’ve been a happy TurboScan user for quite sometime (you can read my review here) but I always like to see what’s out there and Genius Scan+ got me curious.
Genius Scan+ is the paid version of Genius Scan and compared to its free brother it doesn’t display annoying ads. Not only that but it also sports enhanced sharing options to Evernote, Dropbox and Google Docs. Anybody who is serious about the efficiency of their workflow should buy the paid version and consider the free version only as a trial.
Main screen
Genius Scan+ main screen is split in two sections. The upper one contains two simple icons that allow you to either take a picture of the document you want to scan or use a photo already stored on your iOS device.
The lower part of the screen contains the documents you have previously saved while working in the app. This is useful if you have already processed some images, saved them locally and want to send the document to someone else.
As it’s quite common in many iPhone apps, the settings icon is positioned on the upper left corner of the screen.
Everything is where you would expect in Genius Scan+ and this is one of the strong features of any intuitive, powerful apps. Genius Scan+ is no exception. I like the fact that you can start using the app straight after downloading it from the App Store without wasting time reading long FAQs.
Settings
From this page you can easily set:
Wifi Sharing
This function allows you to easily access the documents you have created in the app from a computer located on the same wireless local network. As soon as you turn this option on, you are presented with a web address that once entered in the browser’s address bar of your computer lets you to retrieve the documents created in Genius Scan+. It’s an elegant and practical solution that has been tested in other apps.
Default Enhancements
Once you take a picture of a document you have the option to automatically enhance it, force the document to be black&white, or simply to enhance its colors.
You can also choose to enhance the images in post-processing but this option is useful if you always create your scans in a certain way.
PDF Options and Export plugins
You can also set the default page size and orientation of your scans. I’ve found that the option fit to image gives me the highest level of flexibility so I have set it to this value.
Genius Scan+ offers one of the widest ranges of export options out there. You can export documents via Email, Twitter, Facebook, Evernote, Dropbox, Google Docs, Box.net, Expensify.
This is a very good list and everybody will find the sharing option they need. I’d love to have the ability to toggle off the services that I don’t use in a similar way you can do it in Reeder.
Usage
To use the app you always follows the same flow:
- Take a picture.
- Define which portion of the picture to process. This is done by using a grid that you can adjust to fit the document borders. The process is very intuitive but maybe not as precise as in TurboScan in which you have a magnifying glass to precisely select the edges of your document. Nothing too dramatic, but be aware of it if your eyesight is not that great.
- Rotate and enhance the image.
- Share or save the PDF/JPG created. If you save the document locally you can append it to an existing file therefore creating a multiple page PDF file.
When you share the document you can also choose to reduce its size to small, medium, large and actual file size.
In my tests, I’ve found that large is a good compromise between quality and overall file size. PDF files shared as a smaller file can easily be processed by Adobe Acrobat for character recognition (OCR) or by using the automatic OCR functionalities in Evernote.
I’d like to highlight how good the image processing and the perspective correction tool are in this app. I’ve achieved fantastic results even when the picture taken was abnormally askew. This is a huge time saver when you’re out and about and don’t have time to perfectly position the camera perpendicularly to the page to scan.
Conclusions
This is a very intuitive app that will get you started in no time. Scan a document is as easy as point, shoot, select and share. An efficient process in all situations especially if you are away from your desk.
Genius Scan+ costs €2.79 and is ). Give it a go, I am sure you’ll find it useful.