The camera on the iPhone takes great photos, but some people don’t realize it’s a great document or image scanner. Take advantage of this iPhone 6s, iPhone 6s Plus or the new iPhone SE camera and be more productive at the same time.
Next time you’re in a meeting, pull out your iPhone and take snapshots of the paperwork that fills the desk or take a snapshot of the whiteboard notes taken. When a coworker or new friend is giving you a business card, take a photo of it and pull the card back so someone else can use it.
These 5 iPhone scanner apps will help you stay paperless and save time entering contact information in your Contacts app. It will also clean up the clutter in your computer bag, backpack and/or trash can.
Evernote’s iPhone Browser Apps
Evernote is a great service for collecting, organizing and storing information. It is also one of the best iPhone browser apps.
Evernote App
this Evernote app (Free) allows users to capture and edit images. It also places a shortcut in the Today section of the iOS Notification Center with a pull-down.
Open the app and tap the button on the toolbar at the top. Or if you’ve already created a note, tap the camera button at the bottom of the note screen.
The Evernote app also places a shortcut in the Today section of the Notification area. If you haven’t installed it yet, open the Notification area by swiping down from the top of the screen. Scroll down to the button. Tap it and you will see a list of available Today shortcuts. You may need to scroll down if you already have loads installed. Tap the green Plus icon next to Evernote. Use the handle (three horizontal lines to the right of the app name/icon) and drag it up or down to place it where you want it. I keep it near the top for quick access.
You can now open the Notification area and tap on it. Tap the button to take a new photo of a document. It automatically finds the document and takes a photo if it’s on a high-contrast background. If the camera cannot find a document, take it yourself with the white circle. The application takes the photo and waits for the user to take another photo (for multi-page documents) or press the Save button to create the note.
scannable
Evernote also produces one of the simplest iPhone browser apps. scannable (Free). It is simpler and better to scan documents for later use.
Open the app and the camera is already on, waiting for a document to appear on a high-contrast background. Tap the menu button (three dots in a circle to the left above the scanned image in the first screenshot above) and turn it on to configure it as you like in the blue menu screen (middle screenshot above).
I like the Capture feature set to manual rather than automatic. Auto capture usually catches things before I’m ready. However, Auto works best for scanning a group of pages one after the other. Users can also turn the flash on and off and find the link to their recent scan. This brings up previous scans (right screenshot above).
Which App Should You Use?
If you plan to scan a document and work with it right away in Evernote, use the Evernote app. Use Scannable if you just want to scan a group of pages or quickly import an item such as a business card, napkin or whiteboard notes or a photo.
Office Lens
Many people use Microsoft Office and OneNote instead of Evernote. The OneNote app for iPhone doesn’t handle browsing and importing images very well. However, they make an app called. Office Lens (Free) works great and even handles scanning to other services and apps via iOS sharing functionality. This makes it one of our favorite iPhone browser apps.
Like Scannable above, open Office Lens and the camera is ready to scan. At the bottom it shows Documents (selected by default when you first start Office Lens), Whiteboard, Photo, and Business Card scanning options. Select what you are scanning and point the camera at it. Tap the red circle to take the photo. Click to start sharing. Share using the built-in menu (middle screenshot above) or use the iOS share button in the lower right corner (left screenshot above).
After taking a photo of the item, you can choose from Business Card, Photo, Document, or Whiteboard. To do this, swipe along the bottom. Each scan type processes the image differently. Documents lets you export the scanned document to any installed Office Mobile app or as a PDF, to Mail or iOS Photo Library.
There is a menu button in the upper left corner. Tap or swipe from the left to see the menu. It allows users to choose between importing the image from Camera or Phone’s Photos. You can also select Recent Uploads to start working with the most recently scanned images.
Scanner Pro 7
Readdle makes some of the best productivity tools and Scanner Pro 7 ($3.99) fits this space of quality and utility.
Point the iPhone camera at a document, business card, picture or whiteboard and tap the red plus button in the lower right corner of the app (left screenshot above). This brings the camera. The camera will automatically find the edges of the document as long as it sits on a high-contrast background (middle screenshot above). When Scanner Pro 7 receives the image, it loads a preview. The user can add more pages (see the leftmost button in the right screenshot above). This turns the camera back on. Users can share the scan using the middle button or edit it with the rightmost button.
If the user scans multiple copies of a document, they can tap the grid view to see them all at once (see left screenshot above). While editing the document, users can switch between color, black and white, grayscale or switch from document mode to photo mode (see right screenshot above). Editing the document brings up options to crop, rotate, or change the contrast and brightness (middle screenshot above).
Scanner Pro 7 is probably the most powerful of our iPhone scanner apps. Users can share scans with other apps installed on the phone or upload them to supported cloud storage services. You can also create a workflow shortcut that quickly scans the image or document and quickly uploads it to one of the cloud storage services. I created one for Evernote, seen in the middle screenshot above.
Adobe Fill and Sign
Do you fill out forms sent to you by email or in paper form? Adobe Fill and Sign (Free) does a great job of handling them. Scan the document or import it from the phone’s image gallery and sign it using your finger or stylus. You can also share PDF forms in the app using the iOS sharing feature. Sign and/or fill out the form over the phone and submit.
Adobe Fill & Sign works with an Adobe Create Cloud subscription that syncs with documents you create using the Adobe Acrobat Document Cloud service.
If someone emails a PDF, you can open it in Adobe Fill & Sign. Fill and sign. Then email it back. No tree needs to die in this type of operation.
The autofill feature allows the user to enter personal information to make filling out digital forms quick and easy. Tap on the small contact icon (left screenshot in the lower left corner of the screen) to open the personal information screen. Enter personal details here so they are available when the form arrives in the next email. If necessary, add custom fields using the button at the bottom of the personal information entry screen. When you’re done, tap on it.
When a form comes in via email or browser, tap an input box (see screenshot at top right) and tap the contact icon again. Tap the relevant personal information item such as the name in the screenshot on the top right, and then tap . The application puts a text box in the document. You can change the size of the text using the pop-up toolbar. Press the button for more options (three dots in the pop-up toolbar at the top right in the screenshot).
