Why Is My Tinyscan App Not Uploading to Dropbox Automatically
It'southward the 21st century, and nonetheless there'southward still so much paper flooding into our lives: receipts, role forms, bills, messages domicile from our children'due south school, and on and on. Owning a dedicated document scanner can aid, but it's not always nearby when nosotros need it. Luckily, ever since the iPhone's photographic camera gained sufficient resolution to capture crisp text, there have been a number of certificate scanning apps that have put the possibility of going paperless much more than in accomplish. After testing a number of certificate scanner apps, our pick for the all-time scanner app on iPhone is SwiftScan.
Curated List of Must-Have Apps
Nosotros spend an inordinate amount of time sorting through hundreds of apps to find the very best. Our team here at The Sweet Setup put together a short list of our must-have, most-used apps in 2022.
You will become…
- The current listing of The Sweet Setup's acme 8, must-take apps.
- A special, pro tip for each app to assistance y'all save time and become more than of a power user.
- A hidden feature of each app that yous may not have known about.
The Sweet Setup Staff Picks for 2022
These apps work on iPad, iPhone, and Mac. And they range across several unlike categories just are mostly focused on productivity. They will help you lot get the most out of your devices and your day.
Become the List »
Introduction
The first document scanner I e'er saw was in my loftier school's art department in 1994. One of the art teachers had it hooked upwards to a Mac with an early version of Photoshop for students to play with. I call up he showed me a paper collage that a educatee had made from a dense design of cut up magazine images, all bristling with jagged edges. He laid the collage into the scanner, closed the lid, and after a burst of green light, the collage appeared on his computer screen, now smoothed out and perfectly seamless, every bit if it had always existed just similar that.
Information technology seemed like a vision of the future.
Only, in fact, the original engineering for document scanning actually existed before the telephone, derived from the "Electric Printing Telegraph" that was patented past Scottish inventor Alexander Bain in 1843. Bain's invention became the basis for the fax machine, various forms of which appeared throughout the early 20th century. Finally, it became widely available when Xerox released the Magnafax Telecopier in 1966, the first relatively affordable, relatively portable fax car, and the start that could use a standard telephone line.
But the difference between a fax machine (which already seemed antiquated to me in 1994, with information technology'due south painfully tiresome process and high-pitched whiny modem audio) and a document scanner was that a scanner didn't need to spit an prototype out the other end. It could ingest the prototype and then hold it in that more perfect digital space, where your life demand not be chaotic up by paper because paper doesn't exist. I've always hated paper and the clutter newspaper creates, so document scanners have always seemed magical to me.
More recently, document scanners take grown even more than powerful with the broad adoption of Optical Character Recognition (OCR) software in many certificate scanning applications. Now, you're not only creating a digital epitome of a certificate, simply also extracting the information from that document that you can search, re-create, paste, and organize.
For a long time, the problem was hardware. In order to browse documents, you lot had to buy a relatively expensive device, attach it to your computer, then take the time to feed your documents into it. Devices similar the Fujitsu Scansnap fabricated this easier by allowing you to feed a relatively large stack of documents at once. Newer, more portable devices similar the Doxie Go made it easier to scan documents away from your figurer. Only information technology was the release of the iPhone 4, with its dramatically more powerful camera, that actually put a usable scanner in your pocket.
Of course, you tin't replace a fifty-folio automatic certificate feeding Fujitsu Scansnap with an iPhone—but, you can use information technology to scan single or even multiple page documents on the go, ranging from receipts, business cards, fliers, and elementary newspaper forms that yous'd rather fill out electronically. But at that place are a lot of scanner apps on the App store. How to cull?
Criteria for the best Scanner App
When because scanner apps for this review, we looked at the following criteria:
- Image Quality – Are the app'southward scans clean and readable?
- Edge Detection and Page Straightening – Does the app easily and reliably pick out the image from its groundwork and make clean it up in the scan?
- File storage and management – How does the app help organize the scanned images?
- Cloud services – What options does the app requite for exporting images to Dropbox, Google Drive, OneDrive, etc.?
- Optical Grapheme Recognition – Can the app convert the scanned image to searchable text?
- Editing – Does the app allow for paradigm editing, folio-reordering, etc.
The Best All-Effectually Scanner App for iOS: SwiftScan
SwiftScan (Gratuitous, universal) is the best overall scanner app for iOS. When information technology launched, Federico Vittici was impressed primarily with the blueprint of the app, but noted that information technology lacked some pro features of other apps. Since and so, SwiftScan now offers an optional in-app purchase package. For $5.99, you go OCR, search, edit and sign. For $vii.99, you also get motorcar upload, Touch ID support, folders, a magic color filter, smart naming, and themes. For a $9.99 upgrade, you get all the above features plus another copy of SwiftScan Pro to share with a friend.
Overall, it's the only scanner app that meets all our criteria: simple, accurate scans with background uploading to a diverseness of cloud services, accurate OCR, and even simple editing usually reserved for PDF direction apps. With version half dozen of SwiftScan, a new UI was introduced that fabricated the app more than intuitive to use, also equally brought in some more powerful PDF editing tools.
Capture
The beginning aspect that sets SwiftScan autonomously from other scanner apps is how information technology captures an image.
Subsequently opening the app (which tin exist protected with Touch on ID with the IAP), the camera is the first screen, then getting correct to the business of scanning is quick and like shooting fish in a barrel. It'south also worth noting that yous tin alter whether the app starts with the photographic camera or the documents listing in the advanced settings.
Different other scanner apps, which let you position your device notwithstanding you want then require you to tap a capture button, SwiftScan gives you on-screen communication equally you're taking the pic: "Besides dark," "Also close," "Move closer," and then on. You don't have to heed this advice. Yous can simply tap the capture push button. But if you do follow the advice, the app will sense when you lot're in the correct position, tell you, "Don't motility," and after a moment, information technology takes the pic itself.
In my experience, this process took slightly longer than some of the other edge-detecting apps I tried, merely it resulted in more consistent, high-quality scans. The characteristic is fifty-fifty better if you lot toggle the continuous mode in the lower left corner. In this mode, the app volition continuously snap pictures of new pages as soon as it detects new document edges. This is by far the easiest manner I've seen for capturing multiple page documents from any iOS app.
SwiftScan also has what the programmer calls "magnetic manual certificate cropping." In brusk, this makes the app'south edge detection and cropping super fast.
In one case yous've captured a document, y'all have the choice of reordering the pages, cropping the flick, rotating it, and changing the scan from a colour photo to high dissimilarity black and white or grayscale all before saving it.
You can tap salvage, and so the browse will be handed off to any additional OCR processing or background uploading. Additionally, you tin besides ship the PDF as an email, upload to a different deject service, or choose whatever actions that were automatically detected during the OCR process (such equally calling a phone number). Of course, yous can go back to the scan at any time to rearrange pages, add together more pages, delete pages, or add together annotations.
Optical Grapheme Recognition
As noted above, a $5.99 in-app buy unlocks pro features, and chief among these is the ability to automatically process scans with OCR and so that the text becomes selectable, searchable, and more. The process is remarkably fast for unmarried page documents, usually requiring no more than a minute, and perhaps merely a few seconds depending on how much text there is to scan.
Once the process is complete and you open up the scan, you tin can tap on the text to select information technology, or yous can tap a handy text button on the lesser of the screen to view just the text that has been extracted from the browse. OCR is rarely perfect, but in my tests, SwiftScan did a good job extracting authentic text. Most of its errors were with punctuation, rendering some commas as periods. My only quibble with the implementation is that I wish that when I selected some text, I had an option to select all the text rather than having to drag to select everything.
It's besides of import to annotation, especially for business users who have strict information confidentiality requirements, that SwiftScan does practise the OCR on the device itself, not in the deject.
Editing Tools
Another incredibly handy feature is SwiftScan's unproblematic editing tool, enabled by tapping Comment in the lower correct expanse of the document screen. This allows you lot to write, highlight, or add together notes to parts of a document, and y'all can even add your signature. There's also an Eraser for removing any of your own annotations at a later fourth dimension. The signature role gives yous a large box to scrawl your name in, which so gets magically shrunk downwards for yous to place anywhere in the document.
Other options
We've discussed the primary options that SwiftScan offers, but there's a few more tricks hidden away behind the More button in the document screen.
There are a handful of options available in the More menu, such as the ability to search documents, pick actions (more on that in a bit), add together additional pages, move the document to a folder, encrypt the document (with a countersign!), or delete the current document.
The actions shown in this menu are also available later on y'all browse a certificate that contains information like phone numbers, electronic mail addresses, mailing addresses, and then on. SwiftScan pulls that data and offers pre-built deportment to call a telephone number, email someone, or become directions to the mailing address. It's really dandy, even if it does tend to pull in a few faux negative options (such as a 10-digit account number being mistaken as a phone number).
Reminders
SwiftScan offers integration with Reminders also (with pro features enabled) to set up reminders is bachelor. Although it provides its own reminders service using local push notifications, it can also piece of work with Evernote's reminders along with the congenital-in iOS Reminders app.
Why is this useful? Allow's say that you are out to a business organisation lunch and you scan your receipt earlier y'all go out the eatery. What is reminding you lot to procedure this when you become back to the office? That is where this feature is useful.
Sharing and the Cloud
Once a scan is processed, you can open up information technology in other apps, transport it as an email, or upload information technology to other services like Dropbox, Evernote, Google Drive, etc. You can also set upwards ane of these Cloud services in Settings as an automated groundwork upload for all your scans. I tried this with Dropbox, and SwiftScan created a folder in my Dropbox called SwiftScan. Now each document I scan gets uploaded to that binder automatically. Yous also have the pick of only allowing this beliefs over Wi-Fi. In version three.5, there'south as well an option to use 1Password when signing in to your cloud accounts from SwiftScan.
If you lot're running iOS 8 or higher, yous tin can save files straight into iCloud Bulldoze, and SwiftScan continues adding more and more deject services that y'all tin employ. As of this writing, there's a total of 17 cloud services to cull from.
If you like to continue your files organized past folders, you tin also create folders from the chief screen by tapping the pencil icon in the top right, and tapping New Folder at the top of the list. After y'all have a folder, you tin motion multiple documents into that binder using the same edit function.
Finally, you have the ability (with pro features enabled) to arrange the automatic naming conventions, choosing whether to include time markers (twenty-four hour period, month, twelvemonth, time, etc.) too every bit location markers (city, zip lawmaking, land, etc.), which could be particularly helpful for travelers keeping track of receipts.
Curated List of Must-Have Apps
We spend an inordinate amount of fourth dimension sorting through hundreds of apps to find the very best. Our team here at The Sugariness Setup put together a brusque list of our must-have, virtually-used apps in 2022.
Yous volition go…
- The current listing of The Sweet Setup's summit viii, must-accept apps.
- A special, pro tip for each app to assistance you salve time and go more than of a ability user.
- A hidden feature of each app that you may not accept known about.
The Sweet Setup Staff Picks for 2022
These apps work on iPad, iPhone, and Mac. And they range across several different categories simply are mostly focused on productivity. They will help yous go the near out of your devices and your day.
Go the List »
Alternatives
Though SwiftScan was the best document scanner app nosotros tried, in that location are a few alternatives to consider if you don't need all the features it offers.
Scanner Pro past Readdle
Going into this review, Scanner Pro ($iii, universal) was my app of choice for scanning. Its border detection is the fastest I've seen on a scanning app. Almost every bit soon as you have a document in your sights, the document is outlined in blue (though strangely, I often find my phone is faster at this than my iPad, peradventure considering it has a meliorate photographic camera). Information technology does a great job of converting the scan to a loftier contrast black and white paradigm, deleting any inadvertent shadows, and you have the selection of reordering pages in multi-folio documents later on the scan is consummate.
Scanner Pro and so allows yous to open up your PDF in another app, and if you lot have PDF Expert installed on your device, you can tap Annotate and brainstorm working with the PDF in that app. You lot tin can also upload the document to Dropbox, Google Drive, Evernote, or a Webdav Server, and yous tin can also gear up one of these services up for automatic uploading in the app settings. A new addition to the app is a workflows section which allows y'all to build various processes for post scanning. This might be emailing the certificate, uploading the document to Dropbox and so deleting the scan.
Version seven of Scanner Pro besides added built in OCR (in 12 languages), and the ability to view the document as text. Scanner Pro has become a lot more user friendly in recent updates, and Readdle seems to exist poised to keep a tight race for the all-time scanning app for iOS.
PDFpen Scan+
Smile Software's PDFpen Scan+ ($7, universal) was one the beginning apps to perform OCR on an iPhone without the utilise of the cloud for processing, and it does a swell task. Unfortunately, the procedure for scanning is hampered a chip by a slower multi-stage capture process. First, you take a picture of the document. Next, you tap the certificate. And so, y'all perform border detection and cropping. Then, yous tap washed. Finally y'all perform the OCR. Perhaps a few extra taps aren't a big bargain, but they add up, and information technology doesn't make sense in an app that presumably is designed to perform each of these deportment with each scan. Why not exercise them automatically?
The app has a number of sharing options, including the ability to email just the OCR'd text, and with the most recent update to the app, you can now automatically upload documents to the iCloud folder for PDFpen, or to a folder on Dropbox. In that location is one feature information technology does include that's not matched by SwiftScan: simply tap the OCR push button in the upper right corner subsequently a scan is complete, and 1 of the options is to re-create all the text you've only extracted for easy pasting into some other awarding. One handy use of this is if y'all want to block-quote a passage from a volume, you tin can just chop-chop browse a page, OCR, copy the text, and and then you lot've got the quote on your clipboard.
The biggest advantage PDFpen Scan+ has over SwiftScan is that information technology is part of an entire ecosystem. PDFpen and PDFpen Pro run both on the Mac and iOS. Scanning a file is an entry point into these powerful PDF tools for editing PDFs, creating forms, and more than. SwiftScan is a corking app, simply PDFpen is a great family of apps. If that'southward important to y'all — and to many it is — give PDFpen a look.
Evernote
Evernote (Complimentary, universal, with subscription for pro features) is much more than than a document scanning app, but information technology does have a basic document scanner built into information technology. When creating a new note, if you select the camera function, y'all tin so tell the app that you're taking a picture of a document. It does non show you edges of the document as you scan it, only it will automatically detect them and delete the background for you.
In one case the document is scanned, you lot then have the pick of annotating information technology or sending information technology equally an attachment past mail or message. You practise not have the ability to open it in some other app, and in fact, it's non fifty-fifty a PDF, but rather a JPEG. Evernote will scan the document for text to brand it searchable, only you cannot copy and past that text into another application.
Dropbox
Dropbox recently added the power to browse documents direct to Dropbox, which is where I add my files from SwiftScan. On kickoff glance, I was really excited about the add-on of this feature and possibly being able to remove an app from my homescreen.
Later on using it, my excitement was tempered. Information technology works fine, just SwiftScan is dramatically faster. SwiftScan besides automatically uploads scans. I typically send all my scans to a certain Dropbox binder, only in Dropbox I have to manually save each one. With SwiftScan, I browse, save, and it uploads straight to Dropbox without any boosted taps. Dropbox also lacks OCR and the power to password protect documents. Information technology's a squeamish upgrade to the standard Dropbox app, but it doesn't compete with the power of SwiftScan.
Other Apps
This is a drove of the other apps we tried during our testing.
Prizmo
Several folks contacted us to ask most Prizmo ($10), an iOS app that didn't come up in our enquiry. It'south actually a counter-part to a fully featured Mac app that manages images from a variety of sources: scanners, cameras, screenshots and more, but on its ain, the iOS app has some amazing features, specially in regards to its OCR capabilities.
At first, I didn't call up the app was besides promising because the user interface is a bit lack luster. Tap the photographic camera button and yous get a camera view that attempts to notice the edges of the document you're viewing. In my tests, information technology didn't do a great job of that detection, and then after snapping the picture, I had to manually crop the image again. Then, I had to manually select a "readability" setting which turned the document into high-dissimilarity black and white. Withal, strangely, that loftier-contrast view was non preserved in the terminal document.
So all in all, a disappointing experience. That is, until I tried the OCR functionality. SwiftScan and PDFpen Scan+ both performed admirably at extracting text from typical documents, similar a letter or a flier, but they tended to fall down with more complex documents that comprise numerous text boxes. Prizmo, on the other hand, can intermission documents down into separate text fields and parse each ane separately.
For case, I tried scanning a photocopy I made from a volume with 2 facing pages of text. Both PDFpen Browse+ and SwiftScan had problem realizing that the text on the left side of the folio and the text on the right side of the page were separate text fields, but Prizmo parsed them perfectly (and extremely apace).
Prizmo can likewise transform text in a number of impressive ways. Once you've OCR'd the text, y'all can reorder information technology, edit information technology, re-create and paste it elsewhere, interpret it into a number of different languages, and even take it read aloud to you. In fact, one of the best use cases for the app is its accessibility features. In addition to turning printed text into audio, the app says that when VoiceOver is active, it can help you take the picture with voice cues.
Prizmo is definitely not as easy to use every bit the other apps on this list. It takes more work to get a good scan, and the end result isn't a simple collection of PDFs that yous can easily scroll through and send off to other places. But, if your main goal is to extract text from a document and transform that text, Primzo might be your best choice.
TinyScan Pro
TinyScan Pro (Free, universal) is a nicely designed app and uses a slightly different capture technique. Instead of showing y'all the edge detection as you capture a document, the app shows the edge detection happen automatically after you snap the moving picture. Borders fly in and snap to the edges of the document, ready to be adjusted if necessary. It'due south fun to scout, but I call up seeing the edge detection outset is more helpful. Also, though the app lets you lot upload documents to the cloud, it does not practise and so automatically.
Paperbox
Paperbox (Complimentary, universal) is the companion app to a web app that not only lets you scan documents, but helps yous organize them with a combination of tags and "buckets." Unfortunately, the app does not have automatic border detection, which is a deal breaker for me. It merely takes besides long to manually crop my own documents.
InstaPDF
InstaPDF (Gratuitous, iPhone merely) has a unique capture interface, showing everything through the camera in high-contrast black and white and then that almost cypher appears on screen except for edges and text. Unfortunately, information technology does not have edge detection, so you lot take to ingather the image manually. It does have a part to add signatures and a companion Mac app, but it does not offer OCR, and the only option for uploading to the cloud is InstaPDF's own proprietary spider web storage.
Conclusion
Oftentimes with productivity apps, you lot feel like you lot have to choose between the app with more than features or the app that'south easier to use. The amazing thing nigh SwiftScan is that it has the well-nigh features, and it'southward easier to employ, which is precisely why information technology's the best pick if you want to start using your iOS device to reduce the newspaper in your life.
Curated List of Must-Have Apps
We spend an inordinate amount of time sorting through hundreds of apps to observe the very best. Our team hither at The Sweet Setup put together a short list of our must-accept, most-used apps in 2022.
You volition get…
- The electric current list of The Sweetness Setup's top eight, must-have apps.
- A special, pro tip for each app to aid you save fourth dimension and become more of a ability user.
- A subconscious feature of each app that you may not take known nigh.
The Sweet Setup Staff Picks for 2022
These apps piece of work on iPad, iPhone, and Mac. And they range beyond several different categories but are mostly focused on productivity. They volition help you lot get the most out of your devices and your day.
Go the List »
Source: https://thesweetsetup.com/apps/best-scanning-app-ios/