Scanner Pro – Handy scanning app with OCR functionality

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Download Scanner Pro 7 for the iPhone & iPad ($3.99)

Scanner Pro 7 is a universal app available for both the iPhone and iPad at the low price $3.99 and requires iOS 9.0 and higher.

We call this a “scanning app” but really it’s just a fancy app for taking pictures with some added features for working with “documents.”

The iPhone doesn’t know if it’s taking a picture of a document or a polar bear … the difference is what you do with the picture after the fact such as converting it to a PDF file.

That’s why it’s important to have a good camera – the better the camera, the better the picture, the better the scan. The most recent iPhones & iPads work best because they have better cameras.

Having a scanner app on your iPhone or iPad is so extremely handy. For example:

You’re traveling and get a paper receipt – scan it and e-mail to your office manager or assistant.

You’re in court and opposing counsel hands you a document but conveniently forgot to make a copy for you, set it on the table and “scan” a copy for yourself.

You’re meeting with a client at their office – instead of making them run down the hall to make a copy of a document for you just “scan” a copy.

I like to scan magazine articles in a doctor’s waiting room or business cards from a networking event.

As soon as you launch Scanner Pro you can set it to automatically “scan” a document once it recognizes the four squares of a document. You can also manually tap the button to take a picture/scan, and just keep snapping for multiple pages.

The document can be simple black & white text, or a “color” photo of the document. You can switch back & forth to find the best setting.

If you’re scanning a magazine or book, Scanner Pro now has a handy “Distortion Correction” that attempts to flatten out the page from the spine.

Human eyeballs can read text in a picture, but iPhone or iPad cannot … unless you have it attempt to “recognize” each text character. That’s the job of Optical Character Recognition, or OCR.

This is a brand new feature in Scanner Pro 7 and I’m pleased with it’s performance.

OCR is no easy task for a computer … or a phone or tablet. It takes a lot of computational effort to recognize text like our human brains do … and it’s not always perfect.

Once the OCR is done, you can select text from your scan and copy it, then paste it into an e-mail or another document.

Scanner Pro now lets you set up “workflows” for what to do with a document when you’re done scanning.

With one tap you can e-mail it to a frequent recipient; or I usually send PDFs to Dropbox and use a Workflow to auto-populate the name … although I wish there were a few more options for customizing that name.

And stunningly, Scanner Pro will even let you send the document via FAX!! Which requires an in-app purchase.

You will find many uses for Scanner Pro on your iPad and iPhone since it offers one of the best methods for “scanning” a document in a pinch with the mobile device you already have in your hand.

Download Scanner Pro 7 for the iPhone & iPad ($3.99)