Genius Scan

A scanner in your pocket FREE; $7.99 SCAN+ | WWW.THEGRIZZLYLABS.COM

One of the great things about having a smartphone is the potential that gives you to carry digital versions of documents with you whenever you go. So what if you already have things printed out and want to digitise them, but have no scanner? Genius Scan is one of many document scanning apps around that endeavours to capture your documents and reproduce them into a clear file. Simply lay your file down flat (tip: try to get out as many creases as possible, as these turn up as lines on the finished product) and then press the capture button. The app will take a few moments to detect the edges of the page (sometimes, it’ll have problems doing this), then you’ll see a crisp black-and-white file appear in your library. You can add tags, rename the image, rotate and perform some basic editing, and put it into a group with other files. It works with pages of all sizes, so you can easily store all your receipts in the app, ready for any time you need them. There’s also a few different export options. Upgrading to Scan+ not only gets rid of the rather non-invasive ads, but gives you options to upload to the cloud service of your choice, as well as import docs from other apps, encrypt your files and much more. However, as good as Genius Scan is, the future of these sorts of applications has been put into question (at least, on iOS) with the arrival of Apple’s Notes scanning feature, which does pretty much the same thing. There’s also a range of other existing apps, such as Evernote, that provide this feature as well — which you may already have on your phone.

Carmel Sealey