How to Scan a Document Using iPhone – Carswellfamilyfoundation

Document scanning is a great life skill that is needed for a variety of reasons, both personal and professional. Scanners make it easier to save old documents, sign documents, share files with family, and many other tasks.

While iPhone 16 and his amazing camera is in everyone’s memory, Apple has been making amazing iPhone cameras for years, which means their ability to capture fine detail in documents is getting better and better.

Today we’ll look at some of the best ways to scan a document using your iPhone camera, including Google DriveApple Notes app, Adobe ScanAnd Microsoft Lens.

Taking advantage of optical character recognition, or OCR, these applications can interpret most types of documents, including JPEGs, to extract more meaningful data.

Tools and Requirements for Scanning a Document on iPhone

Document to scan
iPhone
Scanning app

Scanning steps

Make sure your document is ready to scan
Open the scanning application
Scan a document and share it

Step by step guide to scanning

1. Prepare the document

Photo scanner in action.

(Image: © Shutterstock.com / Ja Crispy)

Since we are using the iPhone camera, the document must be well lit on a flat surface, free of blemishes and other defects. While new iPhone 16and even iPhone 15 And iPhone 14If you have powerful cameras, the resolution will always be slightly lower than that of a scanner or printer.

2. Use Apple Notes

Apple

(Image: © Apple)

Built-in Notes The app for iOS and iPadOS is perhaps one of the most requested features considering how powerful it can be.

Case in point: the Notes app can actually scan documents without the need for any other software. First, open the app and click the camera icon, then click Scan Documents. Place a document and it will be automatically scanned using automatic mode. Press the shutter button to take more scans and drag the corners to adjust them.

Your scans can then be saved in a Notes document and then shared with others, saved to iCloud, shared via AirDrop, and more.

3. Use Adobe Scan

Adobe

(Image: © Adobe)

If Notes isn’t right for you or you want more features, a third-party app might be the way to go.

We really like it Adobe Scana free application that not only scans documents, but also has powerful tools for merging them and making other changes that can be useful in a business context.

The app itself is pretty self-explanatory. Prepare your document, open the application, scan the document, and then make the necessary settings.

There are plenty of export options, such as Google Drive and Dropbox, and this is perhaps where Adobe Scan beats Apple Notes.

4. Use Google Drive

Google Drive category feature leaked

(Image: © TheSpAndroid)

Google Drive is another free option, and some of you will already be well connected to the Google ecosystem and will pay for a larger data plan.

Scanning a document is again very similar: open the app, click Add and then the camera icon, and your document should get an automatic blue line showing where it will be cropped.

When you’re happy, click Done, save and share the document.

5. Use Microsoft Lens

Microsoft

Finally, Microsoft Lens. Like Google Drive, this one will work best if you’re part of Microsoft’s business apps ecosystem—and who isn’t? – and offers many of the same features as the above-mentioned apps.

Open the app, choose what you want to capture: Whiteboard, Document, Business Card, or Photo, and take a photo. Each of these modes is designed for different tasks and is a great trick for office work.

The application allows you to edit the photos you take, for example by cropping them. It can even use images taken at a low angle (from a classroom blackboard, for example) and interpret the data as graphs.

Once you’ve taken and edited your photo, there are a huge number of export options and file formats available for saving. Naturally, Microsoft Lens works well with Microsoft 365 lux.

Frequently asked questions about scanning documents using iPhone

Which of these examples is the best?

The answer really depends on what you want to scan and why. For most, we’d say the Apple Notes app will get the job done, especially if you don’t want to download and set up third-party services.

However, in a professional context, things are different, and the choice depends on which ecosystem—Google or Microsoft—your organization exists in, with Adobe Scan serving as a good middle ground that works with both.

Is a smartphone camera enough?

iPhone 16 has an incredibly powerful camera that can capture ultra-high-resolution images, ideal for document scanning. Of course, the iPhone camera will never be as accurate as a real scanner, given the benefits of the scanning tray holding the document next to the scanner and so on.

For scanning photos and other professional purposes, we recommend scanneror printer with a built-in scanner, and for everyone else, an iPhone 16 with a document in good lighting will be enough.

Final Thoughts on Scanning a Document Using an iPhone

Scanning a document using your iPhone is a quick and easy solution if you don’t have a scanner or printer at home or in the office. The cameras on the new iPhone models are so good that they now almost achieve the same clarity as a scanner.

We hope this guide was helpful and thank you for reading.