Despite the fact that we live in an increasingly digital world, many organizations still print out important documents on paper – whether it be a letter, contract, bank statement, invoice, receipt or educational handout.
Some people still rely heavily on paper, too, because they don’t have access to the internet. But this is only a minority of folks, with estimates suggesting that just 10% of British homes and 11% of American homes aren’t connected to the internet.
At any rate, there is still a lot of paper around, and managing it all can be challenging. Most of us end up misplacing important physical documents at one time or another.
But technology, as it often does, can save the day in the form of document scanning apps. With these, it’s possible to scan paper-based items such as letters, receipts and contracts using the camera of your mobile device.
You can then keep them safe and stored on the cloud for future use. The other benefit of this sort of software is that it lets you send documents quickly. Here are the best document scanning solutions out there right now.
- Also take a look at the best document management software
Image Credit: Adobe
When it comes to scanning documents for digital file storage, chances are you are going to want to save in a portable document format-a PDF file. Adobe Scan is a dedicated scanning app from Adobe, the creators of the PDF file, so expectations are high that this should deliver on most user needs.
Adobe Scan runs as an app on your mobile device, whether it is running Android or iOS, and uses your camera to catch a copy of a document to convert into a PDF file. There is a preview option to optimize the file dimensions, and you can rotate, crop, and edit the colour as required.
The biggest advantage of using Adobe Scan is probably its close integration with Adobe’s other apps, not least Adobe Acrobat, and Adobe Fill & Sign. This means you can not only scan into PDF document format, but also edit, annotate, sign and work collaboratively with the documents that you do scan.
Even better, Adobe Scan is a free app to download and use, though there is an in-app subscription available if you want additional features. Cost for this is a monthly subscription of $9.99 per month or $89.99 a year
Image Credit: Abby
If you’re looking for something a little more advanced, it’s worth checking out Abbyy’s FineScanner. The software uses optical character recognition to scan text in 193 languages.
Compatible with Android and iOS, the app lets you scan both printed and handwritten text with your mobile device. FineScanner works with 12 file formats, including DOCX, PDF and TXT. The great thing about the app is that it preserves the original document formatting.
What’s more, you can access a set of easy-to-use annotation tools to add signatures and notes to text. And the iOS version of the software sports a feature called BookScan, which lets you digitize books with ease. It turns facing book pages into separate images, removing any defects.
Once you’ve conducted a scan, you can share it with anyone over email or save it to cloud storage lockers such as Dropbox, Evernote and iCloud Drive. Currently, FineScanner is free to download on Android and iOS devices, but it offers in-app purchases if you’d like to get more storage and capabilities.
Image Credit: The Grizzly Labs
Genius Scan is yet another popular mobile scanning app, with its developers claiming that the software has digitized more than half a billion documents to date. Described as a “scanner in your pocket”, it lets you turn paper-based documents into JPG and PDF files.
Headline features include smart page detection, perspective correction and image enhancement. And with patch scanning, you can create digital copies of dozens of pages within seconds. The app also enhances the legibility of documents, ensuring they’re readable, and you can keep your files organized with titles, tags and a search function.
Just like FineScanner, you can upload scanned documents to a range of cloud storage platforms, including Dropbox, Evernote, Expensify, Facebook, Google Drive, OneDrive (and OneDrive for Business), OneNote, FTP, SugarSync and WebDAV.
If you’re scanning sensitive documents, you can protect them with built-in encryption and passwords (or Touch ID on iOS). It’s free to download on Android and iOS, but offers in-app purchases.
The app is free and comes with a lot of features. For the more advanced integrations and security and MDM settings, there’s a one-time fee of $7.99. For unlimited cloud storage, plus synchronization and web access through Genius Cloud, there’s a monthly fee of $2.99 per month.
Image Credit: Scanbot
Scanbot is positioned as an easy and fast way to create high-quality scans on iPhone, iPad and Android devices. According to the developer behind the app, it is capable of making “hundreds of decisions to capture the document perfectly”.
With the software, you can scan documents, receipts, sketches, whiteboards, business cards, labels, QR codes and barcodes. Once you’ve scanned an item, you can choose from five color modes to make it look perfect. There are also tools to crop and optimize scanned documents, all of which are automatically captured in 200+ dpi.
You’re able to save documents as PDF or JPG files, and you can upload these to a range of major cloud services. The software supports iCloud, Google Drive, Dropbox, Evernote, Amazon Drive, Slack, Todolist, OneDrive, OneNote and Box.
If you plan on using Scanbot for business purposes, you can easily fax documents directly from your mobile device in 50 supported countries. As is the case with most of these apps, Scanbot is free to download on Android and iOS, with the option of in-app purchases.
Image Credit: CamScanner
As the name suggests, CamScanner is an app that turns the camera of your mobile device into a document scanner. With it, you’re able to scan a range of documents, from invoices to receipts. The software turns scanned documents into PDF files, which are automatically uploaded to cloud services such as Box, Google Drive, Dropbox, Evernote and OneDrive.
Targeted specifically at business users, the app lets you invite colleagues to view and comment on scans. However, they must have a user account to do so. There’s also an advanced editing feature, which lets you add annotations and watermarks to documents, making them look more professional. For improved security, you can add passcodes to documents.
The app is free to download on Android and iOS, but you can upgrade to a premium plan to get 10GB of storage, send document links with password protection, batch download documents, and more besides.
For the Premium Account you have the option to pay either $4.99 a month or $49.99 a year. For the business version, which provides better options for team collaboration, it costs $6.99 per user per month, or $69.99 a year.
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