While on vacation recently I had the need to send a paper document to someone. I had no scanner or fax machine available to me. To compound matters, the document needed to be in Kansas that afternoon…and I was in Maui!
I really didn’t feel like going in search of a fax machine, so I checked into the app store to see if there was something that I could use with my iPhone or iPad. It turns out that there was quite a few scanner apps available, so I spent some time reading reviews to see if I could make a selection that would let me scan the document with my phone.
What I finally settled on was an app called Scanner Pro by Readdle for $6.99.
Now this is expensive for an iPhone/iPad app so I was gambling that the reviewers were accurate when they gave it high praise! My fears were unjustified though. The app worked perfectly! I was able to use my iPhone 5 to “scan” the document, convert it to PDF and email it to the person in Kansas. I later asked her if the document was legible and was told that it was perfect. When I told her that it had been scanned by an iPhone she was amazed and told me that it was indistinguishable from one that had been scanned by a document scanner.
The process is quite straight forward: you just open the app, tap the camera icon, center the image and tap the camera icon again. The you can adjust the corners, orientation and brightness to your satisfaction. From there you can choose to send the scan via email or even send it to your Dropbox account.
I used to travel with a full portable office of laptop, portable printer and portable scanner. Not anymore though. My iPad and iPhone handle all the computing chores for me, and with this new app I don’t need the portable scanner any more! Now, if I could just load paper into the iPad and have it print, that would be great!
Note: Readdle just announced a FREE version (12-18-12) it does EVERYTHING the paid version does EXCEPT you can’t share the output. If you are happy with scanning and saving to your device and also to iCloud, then you can save yourself the $7.00 they charge for Scanner Pro. Getting the free version is a great way to try it out though.
Here is the link: https://itunes.apple.com/app/scanner-mini/id581365763?l=en&mt=8
