CamScanner

Scanner Pro for iOS review

Today I am going to review Scanner Pro by Readdle, arguably one of the most famous software houses for iOS. Readdle is famous for developing apps such as PDF Expert, Readdle Docs and PDF Converter. These are all apps that I purchased a long time ago and that any serious iPad user should own.

Just last week Readdle celebrated its fifth anniversary with a massive sale on the iTunes and Mac App Store. Scanner Pro was an app that I had been eyeing for a while so when I saw the discount I bought it. It’s not that I needed a scanning app but I always look forward to testing new ones.

On this blog I’ve already reviewed two other document scanning applications, TurboScan and CamScanner Pro. Those two apps are the direct competitors of Scanner Pro but this is not going to be a comparison of any sort with the other two apps. I am going to show you the functionalities, highlight the pros and cons and as usual I’ll let you make the final decision on whether to buy the app or not.

I’ve split this review in four parts:

  1. Capturing documents
  2. Processing
  3. Post-processing and uploading
  4. Settings

These four parts are also the steps all iOS scanning applications follow to create the final PDF document. Scanner Pro is no exception to this.

Capturing documents

Scanner Pro is not any different than other scanning applications in what you see after launching the app. The first screen gives you the option to either:

  • Take a picture.
  • Use an image from Camera Roll.

I like the way Readdle’s developers implemented the image acquisition through the camera. For this functionality they have added:

  • A useful grid that overlays the image seen in the camera display to help you align the document. You can easily disable this grid if you wish.
  • A two second delay between the moment you click the camera shutter and the moment the picture is taken. This is the right amount of time to grab and steady the device using two hands.

In my tests these two small improvements help a lot with the quality of the images taken and I have not experienced any bad shooting.

When you acquire your image by using the camera function, you can decide whether the scanned document is going to be composed of one or more pages by tapping on the top-right hand corner of the screen. If you choose the multi-page document, you return to the camera function straight after taking the previous shot.

Processing

Once you’ve imported your image in the app, it’s time to process it.

The options available to the user are limited but I see this as an advantage rather than a limitation. Quite often in fact, developers add too many options in their iOS apps, only to make them more complicated to use when you’re out and about.

The typical usage of a document scanning app for iOS is when you are away from your computer. In these cases you don’t want to fiddle with too many controls. What you want is a reliable application that allows you to create a PDF file just with a few taps. Scanner Pro deserves five stars when it comes to a solid workflow and choice of options.

Image processing in Scanner Pro is a two step process:

  1. Find the document borders.
  2. Select the page size.

The first step is made easier by the fact that the app automatically tries to determine the borders of your document. You can also drag the corners of the area found by the app to adjust the edges of what will become the final document. As is common in all document scanning apps for iOS, the portion of the screen just under your finger is magnified and displayed just off the touching point.

The second step of processing the image allows you to select the page size but this is really just an optional step as you will see in the fourth part of this review. The settings in fact let you select a default document size. Chances are that once you’ve done that the first time you use the app, you will never have to change it again.

Post-processing and uploading

As I said before the developers have made the sensible choice to keep the options at a minimum. What you can do in post-processing is to:

  1. Change the brightness and contrast of the image.
  2. Rotate it.
  3. Process it as a Photo (i.e. as a colour document), Document (i.e. a black and white PDF file) or Grayscale.

After clicking on Save you are pretty much done. In the following screen you can:

  • Rename the file by tapping on its name.
  • Sort the pages in case of multi-page scan.
  • Email the PDF.
  • Print, fax, open the document in a different application and upload it to Dropbox, Evernote, Google Docs or a in generic WebDav server.
  • Password protect the document.

This last option will make many security conscious users happy. Of the three document scanning apps that I’ve tested, ScanPro is the only one that includes this functionality. This is a handy feature if you need to send the document to someone securely.

When you attempt to open the document on your Mac, Preview.app will ask you for a password. Great stuff.

I wish Scanner Pro had TextExpander support. I have a bunch of shortcuts that I use constantly and it’d be handy to be able to type ymd to insert the date in YYYY-MM-DD format in the filename.

Settings

You will find the expected authentication buttons to integrate Scanner Pro with Dropbox, Evernote, Google Drive and a generic WebDAV service. After entering your credentials for any of these services you won’t be prompted to enter them again.

If you use either Dropbox or Evernote you can also enable an auto-upload feature. With this option enabled, the final scanned document is automatically uploaded to the service of your choice. This happens behind the scenes so if you are busy scanning multiple documents, you can continue working on them while the ones already processed are queued and automatically uploaded to the cloud. This increases efficiency. I have found this option so useful that I’ve used it over and over in real case scenarios.

The only annoying thing is that Scanner Pro – like too many other applications that integrate with Dropbox – by default stores the uploaded documents in a predefined folder named ScannerPro, which is located at root level. I wish the developers had added an option to choose an existing folder to avoid overcrowding the Dropbox root folder.

Other options available to the user include a WiFi access point that allows you to retrieve the files stored on the app from any computer located in the same Local Area Network. You just need to open Safari on your Mac, type in the IP address of the device and you will be prompted with a list of files stored.

A welcome feature is that Scanner Pro introduces iCloud sync in the world of document scanning applications. If you are a multi-iOS user, you can install Scanner Pro on the other devices and have the docs automatically synced across devices. I think I am going to use it in combination with my iPad. The Apple tablet is in fact becoming the repository of my PDF files thanks to the fantastic reading experience you get with it.

The list of options include the aforementioned Default Page Size, the option to enable or disable grayscale scanning and to add a password lock to access the app. This is particularly useful if you plan to use Scanner Pro not only as a scanner application but also as a PDF document archive.

To complete this well-made app, you also have the choice of compressing your documents. In my tests the compression reduces the file size by two thirds without an appreciable decay in the quality of the PDF files created.

Conclusions

This is the third document scanning app that I own and the question that I’ve kept asking myself in the past week is whether I will delete TurboScan and CamScanner Pro from my iPhone.

I’ll likely delete TurboScan . It is still a good app but after using Scanner Pro for a week, it feels old. The UI feels old and it doesn’t automatically upload documents to Dropbox, which is something that I love in Scanner Pro.

How about CamScanner Pro? This app almost belongs to a different category because it tries to answer the question of how to edit your PDF files when away from your computer. If you need an app that is able to do OCR, add notes to your scanned files (note for the readers: The notes are only visible in the app Edited: This is incorrect, please see the comments.) and with a more complete feature set then this app is the way to go.

For whoever needs a simple but complete and well-designed scanning app then Scanner Pro is probably the way to go. Its ease of use and the well-thought out UI will help you in all those situations in which you need to scan a document with your iPhone.

as a universal app for iPhone/iPad at $6.99.

CamScanner Pro for iPhone review

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.