As a business traveler i have to do expense reports on a regular basis. For certain out of pocket expenses I'm required to submit copies of my receipts in PDF to our online expense system. Although I have some great document scanners at home, I don't travel with them. However, I always have my iPhone 3GS with me. The great thing about the 3GS in particular is that it has better macro lens support so using it to shoot documents is actually quite feasible.
Scanner Pro lets you use your iPhone to capture documents
Scanner Pro isn't the first App I've tried for this task. However, I was intrigued by the sharing features in particular the direct support to upload to Evernote. I also like the fact that you can transfer documents via WiFi and password protect your documents from view.
How does it work? The user interface is very straight forward. You start with either the iPhone camera and take a picture of your document or one that you've already shot that's on your Camera Roll/Library. Then you can choose the edges for better framing or have it select all. You can work with color or convert it to grayscale. There's even a software based image stabilization feature to capture a better image in the first place. Once you get your shot you can also adjust the Contrast and Brightness. Then you can choose to upload it to Evernote, your Photo Library, your MobileMe iDisk, Dropbox or other WebDAV server. If you have the optional Print n Share app installed you can even print it from your iPhone. Lastly you can of course email it out directly from within the app.
I just used it to do my last expense report for work and it worked great! I also like the ability to combine multiple scans into one multiple page PDF right in the app. However, I don't see a way to combine multiple PDFs together after the fact. In other words you need to do them all at the same time while you're creating them in the App. Another nice bonus is the built-in help/manual. I wish more Apps did that.
You can get Scanner Pro here from the App Store:
The Bottom Line
Like I said, this isn't the first App of this type that I've tried. However, it has more options than every other one I've tried to date. My needs are simple (scan, PDF, email), but it's always nice to know that for the same money or less I have an App that does even more. Also since more and more Apps can tie into the iDisk like ReaddleDocs, this makes a great solution to get documents from say your iPhone to your iPad and your computer wirelessly without having to rely on email.
Scanner Pro
Scanner Pro lets you use your iPhone camera to take pictures of documents and convert them to PDF and then send them via email, upload them to Evernote or other servers.
- Igor Zhadanov
- Get on App Store
- $6.99
All info was collected on 10th May, 2010 when the app was reviewed.
About Terry White
Terry is the co-author of The Best Selling "The iPhone Book" 1st, 2nd, 3rd and 4th editions. He has been active in the industry for over 25 years and is the founder and president of MacGroup-Detroit, Inc., Michigan's largest Macintosh Users Group, host of the Adobe Creative Suite Podcast and a technology writer - Terry White Tech Blog.
What happens if the document is a bit too big to capture with one picture from the iPhone.
Can you capture the document with 2 pictures and stitch them together ?
Bummer, can’t seem to get Hulu to work due to the ‘foreign’ proxy server.
oops, sorry, posted reply on wrong post!