"5 Apps That Turn Your Phone Into a Document Scanner"/ "The Best Mobile Scanning Apps"

 Feb. 7, 2022: I went to the Edmonton Film Industry Facebook group:

I'm posting this here, because the news articles are about writing and filmmaking:

I want to scan all my news articles and save them onto a USB key.

Do you have a scanner that I can come over and use?

I went to the EPL once, and it took awhile to scan a few things and email it to myself or someone else.

I guess I could take a picture of every article, but it doesn't seem as efficient.

I have like a big box of news to scan.

What is the fastest and cheapest way to scan all this?

I would really appreciate it if there is one. Thank you.

Dave M posted this:

Mar. 31, 2021 "5 Apps That Turn Your Phone Into a Document Scanner":

Thanks to smartphones, it's easier than ever to digitize you various documents — such as bills, receipts, newspaper articles and even photos — so that you can access them whenever you want. 

All you have to do is open an app, point your camera at it and — snap — it's saved in the cloud.

Most scanner apps (as well as apps with dedicated scanner features) have built-in technologies that automatically cut, crop and (sometimes) color your scanned document so that it looks best. We've rounded up the best scanner apps that you can use right now. 

Which one you choose will depend largely on the services and apps you already use, as well as how you plan to use your documents after they are scanned.

Adobe Scan

Adobe Scan is one of the best scanner apps because of its simplicity and accuracy — it's also free. Adobe saves all these scans as PDFs, which might be a point of frustration for those who want to save as a JPEG so they can add to a Word document or PowerPoint presentation. 

Also, it saves all your scanned PDFs to its own cloud storage system, Adobe Document Cloud, and isn't the best if you use other cloud storage systems, like Google Drive or Dropbox. It's available on iOS and Android.

Price: Free

Apple Notes

If you're user of Apple's Notes app, the good news is that it has a built-in scanner feature that's super simple to use. All you to do is app the Notes app > select or create a note > tap the camera icon > select Scan Documents. Also, it's free.

Price: Free

Stack

Stack is a new scanner app for Android owners who use Google Drive. It's lets you to digitize your various documents, saving them as PDFs and then automatically uploading to Google Drive. It has some fairly straightforward organization tools, making it really simple and easy to use. There's no iOS app at this time, but that could change in the near future.

Price: Free

SwiftScan

If you're looking for a more powerful and feature-packed scanner app, SwiftScan might be your best bet. It has a number of organization and search tools, and allows you to save scanned documents as PDFs or JPEGs, making them more easily shared; additionally it works with most cloud services, including as iCloud, Dropbox, Google Drive. The downside is that, well, it can be expensive — especially if you have an iPhone. A subscription costs $6/month ($35 year) for iOS, while an Android subscription costs less than half that.

Price: $6/month+

Dropbox Scan App

In the middle of 2020, Dropbox introduced a new scanner feature to its iOS app — unfortunately, it's not yet available on its Android app yet — that allows you digitize your documents and photos and upload them right to your Dropbox. All you have to do open the Dropbox app > select the + icon > select Scan Document. The app allows you to save a file as a PDF or PNG.

Price: Free

The Best Scanner Apps for Your Smartphone (gearpatrol.com)

Jan. 25, 2021 "The Best Mobile Scanning Apps": Today I found this article by Ben Keough on the Wirecutter:

This may seem shocking, but unless you’re an accountant or archivist, you probably don’t need a traditional scanner—today’s smartphone scanning apps are simply that good. After spending more than 35 hours researching 20 scanning apps and testing seven of them, we’ve determined that our favorite is the lean and efficient Adobe Scan (for Android and iOS). It’s dead simple to use, capable of beautiful scan quality, and equipped with excellent text-recognition capabilities. Best of all, it’s totally free—even for iPhone owners.

Adobe Scan (for Android and iOS) is great at capturing the sort of documents life throws at you on a once-in-a-while basis—stuff like rebate forms, tax documents, and the occasional business card. 

It isn’t as complex or powerful as apps like CamScanner or our upgrade pick, SwiftScan, and it can export only PDFs. 

But its simplicity means it’s extremely easy to use, and its scans look even better than those from other top scanning apps. It automatically stores every scan you capture on Adobe Document Cloud, so your scans are accessible from any phone, tablet, or computer. And its useful dedicated scanning modes mean you can add new contacts from business cards and fill out forms right on your device.

If you like the sound of Adobe Scan’s simplicity but spend a lot of time working in the Microsoft Office suite, Microsoft Office Lens (Android and iOS) is the way to go. Its user interface is similarly stripped down, but the output options include Word documents and PowerPoint slides in addition to PDFs. Its scans don’t look as clean as what you can get from Adobe Scan or SwiftScan, and you may find its sharing options annoyingly limited. But its world-class text recognition almost makes up for those drawbacks.

SwiftScan (formerly ScanPro) (Android and iOS) is a more full-featured app than Adobe Scan or Office Lens, offering stuff like custom folders for better organization, smart file naming, iCloud syncing, and automatic uploading to your choice of more than a dozen cloud storage services. 

SwiftScan produces good-looking scans across a variety of document types, including books, business cards, and even photos. It can perform OCR in dozens of languages, and the results are very good, if not quite best in class. However, the iOS app relies on a relatively expensive subscription model, and the more affordable (non-subscription) Android app isn’t as fully developed as the iOS version (though it’s still more feature-rich than our other picks). Ultimately, we think SwiftScan makes sense only for people who really need the extra features.

The Best Mobile Scanning Apps for 2022 | Reviews by Wirecutter (nytimes.com