In case you’re in going paperless, you most likely assume you want a scanner. It is true that {hardware} scanners make turning multipage paperwork into PDFs quite simple. However most of us haven’t got quick access to a scanner.
What we do have are phones, and people telephones have superb cameras. That is the place scanning apps are available.
These apps assist you to take photographs of every web page of a paper doc, crop out the perimeters of the photograph and straighten every thing, then mix these photographs right into a PDF file. A scanning app is useful, however there is a catch: plenty of the apps on the market are a large number.
That is what makes FairScan stand out. It is an app for scanning paperwork utilizing your Android cellphone that simply … scans paperwork. That is it.
FairScan creator Pierre-Yves Nicolas wrote in a blog post final 12 months that he had beforehand tried a number of Android apps for scanning paperwork. “All of them exhibited behaviors that I actually don’t desire,” he says. These behaviors included apparent issues like adverts, hidden privateness violations, and shady practices reminiscent of storing your paperwork within the cloud—then utilizing them to coach AI—with solely a tiny textual content immediate notifying you that is taking place.
FairScan, which is each free and open supply, would not do any of that. It scans.
Courtesy of Justin Pot
To get began, merely set up the app. And sure, it’s Android-only for now, however you may obtain it from the Google Play Store in addition to F-Droid, the repository for open supply Android apps.
Get the doc you wish to scan prepared, inserting it on a flat floor in a well-lit room. Then goal your digicam on the first web page. A inexperienced field will encompass the web page—modify till it is surrounding the portion of the doc you wish to scan. Take the image if you’re prepared.
If in case you have extra pages you may click on the plus button so as to add them; this lets you repeat the method with the subsequent web page. You are able to do this as many instances as you need, permitting you to scan a multipage doc.
If you’re prepared, you may export the scanned pages to both a single PDF or a number of JPEG information.
There are some things you want to bear in mind whereas scanning. First, lighting goes to matter rather a lot. You don’t need the shadow of your cellphone to be within the picture, so be sure your cellphone isn’t positioned between your mild supply and the doc you’re scanning. I discover the app works greatest in a room with diffuse lighting, whether or not that is a number of lights illuminating your work floor, or a number of home windows letting in quite a lot of pure daylight. It is also value making an attempt to get the paper doc as flat as potential, to keep away from distortions.
