Turn your phone into a scanner
What you need: Android or IOS (phone or tablet) Time required: 15 minutes
Formany years, if you wanted to scan a magazine page, receipt or photo you needed a desk-cluttering scanner. These days you can take a good-quality scanned copy of anything by simply taking a photo of
it. Adobe Scan is a new free app that scans anything you point your device at. You can then use its editing tools to refine your scan, save it as a PDF, save it to your PC, or send it to whoever you want.
1Install the Adobe Scan app on your phone or tablet (Android www.snipca. com/24653; IOS www.snipca. com/24654). When it launches, swipe through the introductory screens 1 . You need to create an Adobe ID to use the app, so tap Sign Up 2 and enter your name, email address and a password. Alternatively, tap Sign In 3 to log in if you already have an Adobe ID.
2Now point your camera directly at any page, document or photo you want to scan. The app should automatically detect then scan your subject 1 . If it fails to detect it, you’ll see an onscreen message prompting you to manually scan it. If that happens, tap the Shutter icon 2 . If you prefer to manually scan all your files you can switch off the automatic feature by tapping the Auto-capture button 3 . Tap the the flash icon 4 to switch the flash on or off as you need it. Scan as many documents as you want, then tap the saved thumbnails start editing them.
3You’ll now see all your scans in a carousel display 1 that you can swipe through. The app offers several editing options. The first icon 2 lets you re-do your selected scan. The second one 3 displays all your scans on the same screen as thumbnails you can drag to reorder (useful if you’re scanning the pages of a book). The next icon 4 displays borders around your selected scan that you can drag to crop your scan (tap the tick icon to confirm your choice). Click the bin icon 5 , then Yes if you want to delete the selected scan.
4Tap the arrow icon 1 to rotate your scan by 90 degrees (clockwise). The wand icon 2 offers four further options – Original Photo 3 displays the unedited scan; Auto Color (selected by default) displays a colour-enhanced version; Grayscale 4 converts it to black and white; and Whiteboard is the best option if scanning text written on a whiteboard. Use these tools to edit your scan, then tap Save PDF 5 .
5You’ll now see two tabs – Recent 1 and File List 2 . Tap the three dots at the bottom right 3 if you want to rename your PDF. Next, tap Share 4 to see three options - ‘Email to’, lets you send your scanned PDF using your default email app; Share File 5 lets you share it using other apps, including text messaging or social media; and Share Link 6 displays a link to the scan that you can then share with others.
6Tap the menu icon 1 , then tap Preferences. Here, you’ll see sliders that let you upload scans over a cellular network 2 (meaning it will use your phone’s 3G and 4G data if it’s not connected to Wi-fi), run text recognition on your saved PDFS 3 and save scans as images on your device 4 . To access original scans, open your default Gallery app, the Others/‘other albums’ folder, then the Adobe Scan sub-folder.
7To access your scanned PDFS on your PC, go to www.documents.adobe.com, then log in using your Adobe account details (see Step 1). Next, click Manage Files at the top, then open the Adobe Scan folder. Click Document Cloud 1 , then click Recent 2 to see a list of all your scanned files. Tick to select the files you want 3 , then click Download 4 to download them all (as a zipped file) to your PC. ●