Convert Any Document to Searchable PDF With the Adobe Scan App
Using your phone to scan documents is nothing new. With apps like Scanner Pro and Turbo Scan , if you have a smartphone, there is little or no reason why you need to disassemble an old flatbed scanner in order to digitize anything. Heck, even a simple snapshot of a document without an attachment can probably get the job done in most cases. Even if you’ve already found your favorite scanning app, Adobe’s new app, aptly named Abobe Scan , is something you’ll definitely want to try.
At first glance, Scan works the same way as any other application: point the camera at a document and take a picture. However, Adobe went further and applied optical character recognition (OCR) to the document after scanning it to convert the printed text in the document to digital text. This means that later it will be searchable, as if you typed it on a computer, and not just photographed it. Text can also be copied or annotated from a scanned document to another document using Adobe Acrobat Reader DC or Acrobat DC .
And you can scan more than just documents. The app can be used to create searchable scanned whiteboards, slides shown during a business meeting, business cards, or things like receipts from a recent trip. When you “scan” something, Adobe AI can cut your coffee table and afternoon crumbs from the picture, remove shadows and adjust the perspective to make it look like it was done on a professional scanner, not on your iPhone.
Scanning is free for anyone with an iPhone or Android device, but if you’re an Adobe Document Cloud customer, you get some extra services like the ability to use the signature collection app and access to some organizational tools.