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Mobile application scanner. The best apps for scanning documents on iOS and Android. Installing the Android scanner

Often a situation arises when you urgently need to digitize and send an important document to a work colleague, but you don’t have a scanner at hand. Mobile applications will come to the rescue, which will be able to recognize almost any text information- lecture notes, receipts and even business cards with adding a contact to address book. The best of them Vesti.Hitek were found in iTunes and Google Play.

ABBYY FineScanner

The scanning process is the same everywhere - you photograph a document with your smartphone camera, after which the program tries to determine its structure and output the file in a form as close as possible to the original. Some applications (usually for a fee) can do more than just electronic copy document, but also recognize the text contained in it.

One of these is FineScanner from the Russian developer ABBYY. The program scans both small 1-2-page and large documents. First, you take a photo, define the edges of the page (A4/A5/US Letter/Legal size) to crop, and apply one of three filters - black and white (like a photocopier), "muted" gray, or color, on which the letters are clearly visible.

IN free version FineScanner files are saved in two formats - PDF or JPEG. They can be exported to the "Photo Gallery" cloud services(Dropbox, "Yandex.Disk", iCloud Drive, "Google Drive"), send to Facebook or by email. AirPrint function is supported for printing directly from the iPhone.

Program with set basic functions is distributed free of charge on iTunes, but recognition printed text(OCR) becomes available after purchasing a premium account (1,490 rubles). OCR greatly expands the capabilities of FineScanner, allowing you to recognize text in 44 languages ​​for subsequent editing and save files in 12 common formats, including Word DOCX, XLS, EPUB. FB2, RTF, etc. All advertising is also disabled and the ability to protect PDF documents with a password is given. OCR requires an Internet connection to work.

TextGrabber+ Translator

Owners of Android devices can recommend the TextGrabber+ Translator program from ABBYY - a scanner combined with a translator. Recognized text can be translated into more than 40 languages. Sending documents via email/SMS, as well as to file sharing services is supported. Recognized texts are not deleted from the device, but end up in the "History" folder.

To use TextGrabber+ you need modern smartphone, which has a 3-megapixel camera (at least) with autofocus. OCR functions, unlike FineScanner for iOS, do not require a network connection.

There is currently a 70% discount on the program. It is available on Google Play for 119 rubles.

TurboScan

TurboScan excels with its nice SureScan feature, which takes three photos of the same document and combines them to achieve best result. In addition, in landscape mode, the program can scan several pages and immediately staple them into one file. This saves time because it eliminates the need to organize photos after shooting.

Surprisingly, the application is not integrated with Dropbox, iCloud and other similar services, and this is where it comes from. main drawback. You can send the file (as PDF/JPEG) via email or print via AirPrint, but you cannot save it directly to the cloud. So you will have to open the picture in the file storage and save it there manually.

Evernote Scannable

Scannable is a new app from Evernote released in January. Once digitized, it allows you to immediately insert the image into your digital notebook. Unlike its analogues, Scannable can also create contacts from recognized business cards, and a person’s photo can be imported from the “business” social network LinkedIn.

Scannable's recognition quality is one of the highest. All the work is done by algorithms that automatically rotate, crop and optimize the image. Saved documents can be sent directly to iCloud, via SMS or email. There is no integration with Dropbox, Yandex.Disk and the like.

Prizmo

Prizmo is the choice of professionals. Is one of the most functional applications with OCR support, that is, after recognizing the image, you can edit the text. Therefore, unlike most analogues, Prizmo allows you to export files not only as PDF/JPEG, but also Text Document or vCard.

Prizmo boasts intelligent image processing. This includes rotation, cropping, perspective correction, cleaning (eliminating uneven lighting, paper texture), etc. After recognition, the program can translate text into more than 40 languages ​​using technology Microsoft Bing.

Genius Scan

Genius Scan - very simple program with the function of creating multi-page PDF documents. By default, images are saved in JPEG/PDF format in maximum resolution(usually about 1 MB). If necessary, the file can be “lightened” several times, but with a loss of quality.

Genius Scan's export functions are among the most comprehensive. Documents can be sent to the cloud (Box, iCloud Drive, Dropbox, OneDrive), Evernote notebooks, FTP or WebDAV servers, social networks (Facebook, Twitter), by fax or email. Most of these services, however, will begin to be supported after you pay for Genius Scan+. Having made an internal purchase (for 429 rubles), you will also open a very convenient function auto-sending and possibility PDF import from other applications.

The basic version of Genius Scan is available for free on iTunes.
The Android version of the program is also free.

Almost at the same time they gave me a drawn-out “to test” mobile scanner and gave it a handmade one. It will be interesting to compare the pros/cons of the units, but that’s for next time. Now let's talk about simple manual ones. Manufactured by Mustek Systems (China) and called Page Express H410.

The main thing in a few lines. Scanning in “color” and “gray” modes, resolution 300 or 600 dpi, file format .jpg or .pdf. Power: four batteries or AAA battery. Saving files to a microSD/microSDHC memory card with a capacity of up to 32 GB (card not included), mini (not micro) USB interface. Region rational use- scanning documents; I wouldn’t seriously count on digitizing photos from a family album. The approximate price of it or an analogue is about 3,000 rubles.

The word “mobile” in the name means small size and weight, that is, the ability to be carried in a bag or even in a pocket. Plus, complete autonomy without the need to connect to anything. In the context of the Mobile-Review portal, I wanted to understand whether such a scanner is an alternative to a smartphone camera. And if so, how effective is such an alternative and is it necessary at all? The scanner cannot be classified as a new product, but the principle of operation of such devices is the same, and the advantages/disadvantages are probably similar.

Lyrics

As far as I understand, what is more common in Russia is not the Mustek that came to me, but its complete analogue, the Bliss HandyScan A201. I don’t know which of them is a copy and which is the original, and it doesn’t matter. Judging by their appearance and characteristics, the devices are identical and differ only in the brand name.

Key Question: who might need this thing and why? In the office (and many at home) there is an MFP with a flatbed scanner included, and in all other cases a smartphone camera will help out. For the "ennobled" appearance document and correct operation"recognition systems" have special smartphone software for quite affordable price, and our separate scanner looks like a frozen mammoth carcass: it seems like a good and valuable thing, but it’s of no use in everyday life.


The answer to the question is quality final result. Modern recognition engines (the same FineReader) work perfectly and are already adapted for recognizing photographed pages; smart software takes into account geometric distortions. And yet, the result from the scanner is better and requires much less manual editing of the text after recognition.

Another important advantage is independence from lighting conditions. In poor light, many smartphone cameras take ugly pictures, and the flash glares and creates spots. In this sense, the scanner is good: it has its own built-in light source, and the device does not care under what conditions you move it across the sheet. Whether in the twilight or in the bright sun, he doesn’t care. Although it seemed to me that the scanner works worse in bright sunlight.

Positioning

I don’t consider myself a gadget fan, although I don’t blame them at all. There is a category of people who sincerely love technology simply for what it is: a person buys a device he likes, and then begins to come up with a use for it. A scanner does not belong to this category of gadgets; it is obviously not a toy, but a boring tool with a limited scope of use. When I needed it, I took it out and used it, then it went back into the closet for weeks, or even months.

The obvious scope of application is a variety of documents, the images of which need to be preserved as much as possible in their “original” form without any special geometric and color distortions. Office and work documents available only in paper form. Schemes, drawings, drawings, contracts, certificates, certificates and other pieces of paper.

Scanning photographs is a controversial issue. It turns out well, but the process is quite tedious, especially if you’re not used to it. The main advantage over taking photographs with a decent camera is almost perfect color rendition. That is, the scanned photo will retain all the shades of the original. But there is whole line subtleties, more on that separately.

It may also be necessary to roll up the document directly into a PDF file and send it. But it should be understood that for permanent professional use such a scanner is unlikely to be suitable due to “ human factor» moving the device manually. The result can be very good, but not always. In this sense, a mobile broach scanner with an electric motor is much more predictable. But for occasional scanning of documents, diagrams and drawings the device will fit not bad, but costs three times less than an automatic broach.

If the scanner is used primarily to work with black and white (sometimes color) documents with a resolution of 300 dpi, then the device will not disappoint. Other areas of application are rather as an exception or “for fun”; the process takes too much time.

Equipment and design


A complete set of everything you need, just like “in the good old days.” In addition to the scanner itself:

  • Disc with software, including ezScanPal 2.0 (viewing images when connecting the scanner to a computer), ABBYY FineReader 9.0 Sprint (text recognition), ArcSoft Mediaimpression.
  • Connection cable USB-miniUSB
  • Battery set (4 AAA batteries)
  • Fabric cover, cleaning cloth
  • User's manual and cardboard for calibrating the scanner

Let me repeat once again: a microSD/microSDHC memory card (supports capacities up to 32 GB) is not included in the package, and without it it is impossible to use the scanner. However, the sizes of the generated scans are so small (within 4 MB in color and maximum resolution) that any map lying around at home will suffice.

As for the size and design, they are completely subordinated to functional requirements. The length is determined by the strip being scanned (A4 sheet with a small margin), the width and height are determined by the volume of mechanical “filling” and the ease of holding the scanner in your hand. It is rational, not ugly in appearance, and the sharp edges are smoothed out.


A miniUSB socket for connecting the scanner to a computer; if you have a card reader, you are unlikely to need it. And the nest underneath microSD card with a carefully drawn indicator showing how to insert it correctly. They drew it for a reason: the card is inserted with the contacts facing up, but I stubbornly wanted to insert it the other way around, with the markings facing up.

Specifications


Convenient when all necessary information right on the box. Some comments and clarifications from experience:

  • There is no Black & White mode, there is only Gray (8 shades of gray). For office documents without pictures, B&W mode would be useful (file size and scanning speed), but better this way than the other way around. Because any primitive editor will allow you to make a B&W from Gray in two clicks, but on the contrary, no Photoshop will help.
  • Regarding the scanning speed of 5 and 10 seconds, they clearly got excited, feel free to multiply by two. There is a “hint” about speeding on the display, and with experience you will quickly get the hang of it.

  • They also got excited about 300 A4 sheets from one set of batteries. 150-200 pages in black and white with a resolution of 300 dpi will be more like the truth. And it's good if full pages 80-100 in color and 600 dpi resolution.
  • Resolutions 300 and 600 dpi – two possible options, there are no intermediate values.
  • The scanner cannot independently determine the boundaries of the sheet, and you cannot do without subsequent cropping of the image.

Features of work


As you may have noticed from the description, the scanner has its own 1-inch diagonal STN color display. As a multi-function indicator it is extremely useful and works great. Allows you to easily configure parameters, shows the battery status, and most importantly, controls the speed of the scanner. At the moment of speeding, a yellow stripe appears instead of the next green one, if everything is hopeless - red Exclamation point and refusal to continue scanning. I must say that even one yellow stripe means an error and an unimportant result; it is better to rescan at a lower scanning speed. And two stripes is a serious problem, you understand.


This is approximately what the consequences of one unsuccessful movement of the hand look like while moving the unit along a sheet of paper. The text suffers first of all; the unit manages to correct small errors when scanning pictures without consequences.

It's sad that you scan book pages you are unlikely to succeed. For a scanner, the distance from the edge to the beginning of the “active” working area is 15 mm; for a book, the distance to the beginning of the text is usually 9-12 mm. It's a pity, only a few millimeters are missing.


The description of the display advertises the function of viewing the received image. The maximum that you will be able to “view” on such a display is the very fact of the presence of the image. As good as the display is as an indicator, it is just as useless for viewing, even despite the image zoom function.


Required condition- a flat, smooth surface on which the device rides. Even a couple of small ones bread crumbs under a sheet of paper can have a fatal effect on the scan results. Likewise with crumpled pages, paper clips, etc. For example, I was able to scan the double page of my passport only on the third attempt, and the result was useless. It’s easier with ordinary A4 sheets; the necessary skill appears even before the first set of batteries is consumed.


It happens to scan a small “object” non-trivial task, the sheet must be held somehow during the process. The ideal solution there would be a piece of glass, but the depth of field of the scanner is negligible, and even through glass 2 mm thick the image turns out blurry. The thin, transparent file wrinkles under the scanner. A good result is obtained with a thin folder, a kind of compromise.


I would advise starting with a resolution of 300 dpi and stopping there, in 90% of cases it is enough. And the scanning process is much faster and more reliable. 600 dpi may be needed when scanning very small text or graphics. The second area of ​​application is photo scanning. The trouble is that the jpeg compression of the scanner software works too aggressively, and noise will be visible on large images, which is where 600 dpi comes in handy.


Scanning magazine pages, advertising materials, brochures and other medium quality printing is quite acceptable at 300 dpi (see above), something much better high resolution you still won't achieve it. For photographs, even small ones, 600 dpi is still better. Below is an example of one photograph 10 x 15 cm, reduced to one size in a photo editor, no other editing


Scan of the photo in 600 dpi resolution


The photo was retaken with a good camera in a resolution of 12 mpx


The photo was taken with a smartphone camera in a resolution of 12 mpx

The scanning results are predictably better than a photo from a smartphone and, perhaps, somewhat worse than a snapshot Canon camera G15. What I mean is that you shouldn’t expect photo miracles from such a scanner; this is still a level of consumer goods. But it works well and, importantly, does not depend on lighting conditions.


Another example is a deliberately “weak” original. A free regional newspaper on poor paper, and even slightly wrinkled in the process of stuffing it into Mailbox. The resolution is 300 dpi and I didn’t try very hard, according to the principle “what happens, what happens.”

Instead of a resume

Abstracting from the price and the desire to tinker with this thing, I’ll put it this way: a useful purchase if you don’t have a good camera, the camera in your smartphone is mediocre, and you have to deal with digitizing paper documents regularly. Rest typical situations discussed above, the pros and cons are discussed.

Sergey Potresov ()

These days, you can do whatever you want with your phone, and scanning documents is no exception. With your phone's built-in camera, you can easily scan any document by simply taking a photo of it.

Taking just a photo of the document may be enough for most, but the photo does not offer OCR (Optical Character Recognition) capabilities, which converts a scanned paper document or image into editable and searchable data formats such as PDF. Therefore you need help third party application, which can scan an image into a PDF file.

One of the most popular applications for scanning is CamScanner(scanner for Android). This is a powerful Android application that allows you to scan and digitize documents, images and anything else using your camera mobile phone. Just take a photo of any paper document and CamScanner will automatically crop the image, enhance the image quality, and create a PDF file.

You can change the scan quality and brightness to achieve the best results. Scanned documents can be sent by email, uploaded to the cloud, or printed online. You can also manage images using tags or search.

CamScanner is available in free and paid versions. In the free version, watermarks are visible in the scanned document, and there are advertisements in the application. Paid version deprived of all this “joy”.

There is a version of this application for tablets as well. Called CamScanner HD, it turns your Android tablet into a portable scanner. The application is supported on tablets with Android version 3.x and higher.

Additional features of CamScanner:

Advanced document editing— you can make annotations on documents using full set editing tools. You can also add custom watermarks to mark your documents.

Collaborate on documents— want to get feedback on your document? Invite friends or colleagues for collaboration over it. They will be able to view, comment and share ideas on documents in groups.

Security of important documents- if you want to protect confidential content, you can set a password to view important documents; Also, when you send a link to a document for download, you can set a password so that no one else can view the content.

Quick search— if you already have a lot of documents, you can use tags to categorize and quick search. In addition, the function optical recognition helps you find texts inside images and notes. Just enter one keyword and you will quickly find the document you need.

Sync on different platforms — you will have to register to get the ability to sync on the fly. Simply log into your account from your phone, tablet or computer (visit the CamScanner website) and you can view, edit and share any document.

A smartphone is a multitasking device. Combination different ways its interaction with reality and the Internet at the same time makes it a kind of portal. Real things in it acquire a virtual essence, and in a second they are already somewhere in our cloud storage, delighting our friend or work colleague. Today I will tell you how your smartphone/tablet can replace a document scanner, which, unlike mobile device, not always at hand.

1. Method one - “it couldn’t be simpler”

The simplest and not requiring any special actions the working method looks like this. We put client application one of the “cloud storage” services (for example, or). Turn on the “Camera” mode and that’s it. This is what it looks like in Yandex.Disk.

Now, as soon as we bring any document to the eye of our camera, it will immediately appear first in the pictures folder on the mobile device. And in a second it can be seen in the “cloud” and on all devices that are connected to it.

When you enable the “Camera” or “Auto-upload photos” modes in cloud storage clients, do not forget to specify the “Only via Wi-Fi” option so that you don’t have problems later when analyzing mobile traffic costs!

As I have written more than once, in mobile applications developers pick up any interesting idea and develop it to such an extent that it was difficult for us to imagine at the beginning. Let's see what we managed to extract from the simple idea of ​​using a mobile device as a scanner.

2. Mobile Doc Scanner Lite

Basically, work Mobile programs Doc Scanner Lite is not very different from the method described above. Only the work with the camera has been improved - it is optimized specifically for working with documents.

In such applications, the snapshot and scan process is separated. This allows you to eliminate problems with the camera. You can specify the area that you think contains the information. This will reduce the file size and eliminate artifacts such as bindings or fragments of other pages of the document that accidentally fell into the frame.

The application can work with cloud Google printer directly. It can also compress the resulting image into a zip archive.

Of course, no one will stop you from sending the page to the recipient via Email or cloud storage (“Transfer Page”).

The application also implements a batch scanning mode, which will be convenient if you want to scan several pages of the same size at once. For example, a book or other multi-page document.

“Spy” mode will reduce the time it takes to photograph a document. In this case, the scanning will be done later, for example, in the quiet environment of your office or home.

3. CamScanner

The CamScanner application is suitable for those who have a lot of document scans. Especially for such users, this program will offer intelligent automatic detection page boundaries and will even correct perspective distortions that inevitably arise, for example, when scanning book sheets. The program also allows you to organize all scans into groups to speed up the search for what you need.

Otherwise, the functionality of the application is very similar to the described Mobile Doc Scanner Lite and differs only in certain interface solutions.

Availability powerful smartphones requires more from us full use their capabilities, and can also in some cases make unnecessary the once absolutely necessary flatbed scanners. The steps described above will allow you to easily scan and send documents and entire books to your cloud storage, if you have the patience.

We have already touched on the topic of mobile scanners for Android, but then the choice good apps was meager, and there were even fewer people worthy of attention. But today everything has changed - Google Play is able to offer interesting programs. What is it about them, these scanners?

Previously, to be honest, it was just pampering, but now it’s not only text recognition, but also graphics editor coupled with a PDF converter. You can scan and organize everything that comes into view on your camera: save receipts, copy lectures, and even make business cards on the go, as well as catalog your handwritten notes. Moreover, you don’t have to be the owner of a smartphone with top-end optics; the program itself will figure out the quality and produce the desired result.

Let's start by introducing the new test subjects. The first to go will be the great and terrible Adobe Scan, which waited until faceless projects made a mess but never became popular, and proudly took the stage, saying that this is who you should look up to.

It was ignored only by Tiny Scanner, which has survived to this day without losing its useful qualities. We will find out how it has changed two years since the last review, in which it remained in the lead. And the review will end with CamScanner, offering some intelligent control, although most likely it's just built-in file manager. However, who knows...

The test equipment used was:

  • Tablet DEXP Ursus 8EV2 3G (Android 4.4.2, MT8382 processor, 4 x Cortex-A7 1.3 GHz, Mali-400 MP2 video core, 1 GB RAM, 4000 mAh battery, 3G module, Wi-Fi 802.11b/g/n );
  • Smartphone Homtom HT3 Pro (Android 5.1 Lollipop, MT6735P processor, 4 x Cortex-A53 1.0 GHz, 64-bit, Mali-T720 video core, 2 GB RAM, 3,000 mAh battery, 4G module, Wi-Fi 802.11b/g/ n).

Adobe Scan Review

At one time we already talked about Adobe products(Illustrator Draw, Fill & Sign DC and Photoshop Express), arrived Adobe time Scan, the main advantages of which are:

  • Free optical character recognition (OCR) engine built into the application;
  • Document Cloud – a proprietary cloud for storing documents and accessing them from anywhere;
  • Converter of scans to Word format;
  • Built-in image editor.

You can consider that all the advantages have been revealed, and the review itself can be completed. But no, there is underwater rocks, and bugs up my sleeve. The rating of 4.1 is not out of the blue. Perhaps only support for Android 5.0 or higher is to blame for this, as well as for the small number of downloads? I won't get ahead of myself and will start in order.

Introduction and preliminary setup

The Adobe application traditionally requires registration, it just so happens - this single service. No less traditionally, we are asked to immediately take the bull by the horns and scan the document.

The fact is that the main interface of the solution is the camera application. However, if we close it, we are taken to the main menu, where we can view the latest scanned documents, as well as common list files.

There is also a sidebar on the left. True, the only interesting things about it are the parameters. They can allow file transfer via cellular network, and also allow you to scan those already downloaded to device pdf. There is also the ability to save original images and select the language for recognition. By default it is Russian, but the list of available ones is extensive.