Hey sisters, has this ever happened to you: You’re rushing to scan tons of documents, contracts or study notes, and then you are stuck with the snail-paced home scanner. It takes forever to scan one single piece of paper, and that annoying machine jams all the time! The noise it makes drives me crazy! I truly hit the breaking point with my scanner!
😭Traditional Scanner, My “Productivity Killer”
I used to think scanners were a must-have for the office. But reality slapped me in the face:
- So Slow You Question Reality: I can literally take an afternoon break after scanning a thick book of paper.
- Tedious Operation: Warm up, place paper, adjust settings, scan, save… The steps make me crazy.
- Space Hog: Scanners are bulky and take up my desk space. It’s also a hassle to store them.
- Single Function: It can only scan, no copying, let alone other fancy features.
- Unflattering Image Quality: Scanned documents sometimes have off-colors, blurry texts, or are generally hard to look at.
📸Camera Turns into Scanner, Productivity Genius!
Later, I discovered a hidden gem: scanning by taking photos with my phone/camera! It opened a whole new world! 🚪
- Lightning Fast: Snap, done in 1 second! N times faster than a scanner!🚀
- Easy Operation: Aim, shoot, OK! Brainless, anyone can do it!
- Portable: Your phone is your scanner, use it anytime, anywhere!
- Powerful Features: Besides scanning, it can auto-correct, crop, improve quality, and even extract text!
- Clear Image Quality: Current phone/camera pixels are super high, photos are way clear enough for documents!
📱My Scanner APP Recommendations
- Built-in Camera App: Many phones have a “Document Scan” feature, super swift and handy.
- Professional Scan Apps:
- CamScanner: Oldie-but-goodie scan app, powerful, cloud sync.
- Adobe Scan: By Adobe, quality guaranteed, clean interface, great scans.
- BaiMiao (Chinese): High accuracy on OCR, can also translate.
- Notebloc: Great at scanning notebooks and handwriting.
💪My “Scanning Pro” Hacks
- Bright light is the key: Make sure of sufficient lighting! Choose a background with even lighting, avoid shadows and reflections.
- Vertical Angle: Keep phone/camera perpendicular to document, avoid distortion.
- Clean Background: Choose a solid color background, avoid clutter.
- After-Shoot Editing: After photographing, use an APP to crop, and adjust brightness/contrast, or sharpen, to increase the scanning quality.
- Batch Scanning: Many APPs have features of batch scanning. Just take all your snaps at once and edit them later. Super efficient!
- OCR: If you need to extract text on the photos, use OCR, it turns images into text for edits and copying.
💡Camera Scanning, All Those Scenes
- Scan ID, Bank Card: No more photocopy store trips!
- Scan Business Cards: Quickly save contact info.
- Scan Invoices, Receipts: For reimbursement and bookkeeping made easy.
- Scan Books, Magazines: Quickly save important content.
- Scan Handwritten Notes: Organize and review, or digitize them.
💯Summary: Scanner VS Camera, My Conclusion
In general terms, for everyday scanning, a phone or camear would do the job, it is more handy and efficient than a physical scanner. Of course, if you scan lots of professional documents, or have a high demand for the scanning quality, then you need a professional scanner.
But for most of us, a phone/camera plus a scanning app is absolutely the better deal! 👍