A few days ago I was made aware of a scanning app for iPhone that I didn’t know. I like apps that let you create a PDF file from a picture you can take with your iPhone.
I believe that the iPhone is a great productivity tool and being able to digitise paper documents into PDF files on the fly is something that I’ve always dreamt of doing since I started using computers (well maybe a bit later, PDF files didn’t exist when I started).
On this blog, I’ve already reviewed two other scan apps TurboScan and Genius Scan+. I thought of working for a few days with and report my impressions.
Versions
The app comes in three different versions: Free, Plus and Pro. Generally speaking there aren’t major differences between the Plus and Pro versions. The former exists due to legacy reasons. You should go for the Pro to find all the goodies. The main differences with the free version are:
- In the Free Version the PDF files generated are embedded with a watermark saying “Generated by CamScanner”.
- In the Free Version, OCR and Airprint are not available. In the full version, there are not any limits.
- The Free Version has ads.
I tend to stay away from free apps, but in general free versions are useful to test the app and check if they fit your workflow. I like the fact that the developers have released a free version so that users can test the app before committing to the purchase.
Scanning
As its common in this type of apps, the scanning process starts by choosing whether you want to use an image already stored on your Photo Roll or take a new picture.
In case you want to take a new picture you can choose to whether take a single image or multiple ones in succession, very useful if you plan to create a multi-page document in one sweep.
There aren’t particular options in this first phase beside the possibility to enable an anti-shake algorithm.
Editing
Once your image is in the app, it’s time to manipulate it so as to get the best results. The process follows these steps:
- Determine the margins of the page. CamScanner is quite good at it but it also allows you to select the edges of the document using your fingers and a clever positioning of the zoom.
- Other options allow you to scan the whole screen or an automatic selection of the document edges. You can of course also rotate the image by 90 degrees clock or anti-clockwise.
- Image processing. You can choose whether to keep the colour document, make it black & white or use the proprietary Magic Color technology that optimises the colours of the image you took. Other options include a gray scale mode, economy (to create small docs) and lightening of the colours.
After you tap ok you are presented with a second editing screen that allows you to fine tune the brightness, contrast and what I believe is the colour temperature.
From this screen you can also start the character recognition. More on this later.
After you use the app for a few days you realise that it aims at being a repository for all your scans files. You can in fact sort them in different ways, add notes and tag to them. You can also sort pages in a multi-page document and the process is very straightforward.
Settings
The app is very complete when it comes to the options available. There are options to:
- Work with faxes. You can use the app to fax your docs. In order to do so you can buy, as an in-app purchase, a faxing service for one, two or ten pages documents. The prices range from 79 euro-cents for a one page document to € 6.99 for a ten page PDF file. I haven’t faxed a document in years but knowing that the option is there in case you need it can be useful.
- You can edit the tags used to catalog your scanned documents and even assign different colors to them.
- Choose the default enhance colour mode.
- Setup your cloud accounts.
- Auto-save your scanned images to albums.
- Set a default auto-process mode in case you want to process your documents always in the same way.
- Set the OCR language.
- Set the page size of your PDF files. Options include the common, in Europe at least, A4, A5, and so forth and North American customers can choose between Legal and a multitude of other sizes more common across the pond. If you are not satisfied with the ones included – and you should be as there are so many of them – you can set a custom size as well. Great stuff.
- You can choose whether to export your PDF to iTunes Sharing.
- Decide whether to include the notes you add when editing a PDF in the file itself.
- Because this app aims at becoming the central hub for your scanned files, you can even setup a backup/restore with your Mac. The way to retrieve your backups use a native Mac app downloadable from the company website.
- A comprehensive help.
- Last but not least you can set a passcode.
The range of options is very complete. You can even submit bugs from within the app itself. I am amazed at the amount of attention that the developers put in adding all these options. I am sure you will be able to configure the app to your liking.
Cloud options
You can export your PDF files to:
- Google Docs
- Evernote
- iDisk (smile)
- Box.net
- Dropbox
At this point I wish the iDisk option were replaced with iCloud. It’d be nice if I could export my PDF files to OS X Mountain Lion Preview.app.
This is a call to Intsig developers, consider this an enhancement request if it is technically possible.
OCR
The character recognition technology is quite good. In my tests I rarely encountered problems. This is a good achievement for an iOS app that performs the OCR on the device itself.
The guys at Intsig did a really good job. The speed is impressive too. While I was testing the app I got suspicious of the speed and contacted their developers to check if the character recognition was done on their servers. The answer is negative, everything is done locally. This is good to know in case you’re worried about your privacy and your scans being uploaded to some remote location. This is not the case for CamScan.
Additional notes
In my tests the UI is well thought and fairly intuitive. There are also some well thoughts solutions to solve seemingly complex problems. For example, in the app’s main menu one of the buttons change its meaning depending on whether you select a single or multiple docs. In the former it means copy file, in the latter merge the documents.
I wish the developers added more common iOS gestures to their app though. I am not sure if this is not being done because the app also exists for other platforms.
For example in iOS if I want to delete an item in a list, my muscle memory tells me to swipe on that item. In CamScanner, you need to tap and hold on the file to get a menu that contains the delete file option. Again, this is not a criticism but just something that I’ve noticed. Your productivity won’t be affected by these things.
The app must be quite popular with Evernote users as it is also featured in the Evernote Trunk list of apps that integrates and belong to the Evernote ecosystem. If you are an Evernote user this is probably a good addition.
Last but not least, the company behind CamScanner Intsig is a young startup whose employees are always ready to help if you have any questions. To write this review I’ve sent them many emails at different times of the day and always received replies in a matter of hours. This is always a nice touch, it means that they care.
After using this app for a few days it has already become one of my favourites. As you know in this period I am working exclusively with iOS devices. This means that I cannot access my scanner. CamScanner helps me to scan the bills I am receiving and continue in my quest to go paperless.
for $4.99.
Great article. Purchased app on your recommendation. I am facing a problem though. Although I use OCR and it says successful, the resulting pdf always returns zero search results. Can you help please.
Hi Rajat,
I’m glad you like the app. OCR should work fine within the app but the PDF is not searchable if you copy the file to a different location. Is that what you’re experiencing?
I suggest contacting CamScanner support. They’re super good and professional.
Don’t hesitate to contact me if you need any other info but as I said, support is probably the way to go.
Best regards,
Riccardo
Actually, similar to notes, the OCR’d text in CamScanner *is* put inside the PDF file. Take a scan of a good printed document, OCR it and then send the document to iBooks. You can search the words inside iBooks – just note that the OCR rarely is perfect. You can also copy the PDF to OS X and then select and copy the text from Preview.
However, when we were testing CamScanner at work with Windows, we could not get the text out with Adobe tools for some reason.
Hi Juha,
Thanks for this. So you made it work. I honestly stopped using the functionality after a few attempts.
I just create the PDF from the app and then process it with Acrobat X on my Mac.
I’ll give it another try next time I use the app. Thanks again for jumping in!
Best,
Pietro
Actually, all of this makes me think if the notes and OCR’d txt added by CamScanner Pro for some reason work with Apple’s products such as iBooks and Preview, but not with Adobe products?
I just purchased the pro version *specifically* because of the OCR capability, and was very disappointed when it didn’t seem to work as advertised. The comments here reinforce what I found; the resulting PDF is not searchable on Windows.
BUT, when I previewed the PDF in Chrome I found I could select the text and copy/paste to notepad. There I realized the real problem: there are *lots* of extra spaces inserted between characters.
For example, my sample document (laser-printed) started with “In response to “, but the copy/pasted text read “In
r esp o n se t o”
Not sure if it came through in this comment, but note the additional line breaks and spaces. If I type the exact text (i.e. “r esp o n se”) my PDF reader *will* find it.
Is there any way to improve the spacing, or even just strip out all the spaces? At least then the text would be searchable.
Hi Bob,
Interesting finding. This looks like one question for the developers. Maybe it’s a know issue, or a limitation.
Have you tried opening a ticket with the guys from CamScanner?
Pietro
Hi, bit late but would be a good info for other users.
Seems you have to get premium to edit text. Have a look in the menu.
I’m glad to have got the plus version for free…
There is a smart phone/tablet accessory that works with Camscanner Pro. The device holds your iPhone or iPad 3 in a fixed position as you change document pages. It improves productivity and helps create multi-page PDFs that can be better interpreted with OCR. It is called ScanJig – available on Amazon or ScanJig.com.
If you need to scan in high quality you may also try the free Scandock app for iPhone. Its new and has some great features
I have encountered a problem and was searching for a solution and got to your blog. Nice article. can you help me? My iPhone unexpectedly packed up and I got a replacement. I have downloaded apps from the i cloud. But the cam scanner which I have used to scan a lot of files is empty. I do not know how to retrieve these files I scanned with the cam scanner.
Sorry for replying so late. I’ve got the feeling that if you haven’t backed those scans up they might be gone. I don’t think scans stored in the app are preserved. Have you tried restoring your iPhone from an old iCloud backup instead of setting it as a new device?
Your review is from 2012. You suggested then that they replace iDisk with icloud. Seems they didn’t. Or am I wrong?
Hi Dan,
I haven’t used the app since that review so I don’t really know if they introduced iCloud support. I can’t find any reference in iTunes ().
Before purchasing the app, maybe it’s better for you if you contact their support at http://www.intsig.com/en/products/camscanner.
Thanks so much for your prompt reply
Dan
No problem, sorry for not being more helpful. Looking at iTunes, I saw that there’s a free version available at
You might want to download that one before purchasing the app. Good luck and thanks again for the comment.
Pietro
Hi Pietro.
I did download the free version (before I happend to see your review which was by the way the best of all I read), and that’s how i found out (before rechecking their website). The app seems to be very efficient, but I must be very careful, because I will be working with 10-15K scanned archive docs for historical research. Hence the tags are also crucial. I am also checking Genius Scan. Their support nicely replied on same and other questions. Will see…
Dan
That’s a pretty cool use for a scanning app! The scanning app I keep on my home screen is . It has automatic upload to Dropbox, Box, Google Drive, Evernote and of course iCloud. Not sure if it covers your use cases, but I’ve been relying on it quite heavily without any glitch.
Scanner Pro doesn’t have tags though, so that could be a problem.