The days of huge, heavy scanners are long since over – with printing and scanning technology having developed quickly, devices are much smaller now. What though, if you don’t have one to hand? Odds are you do, even without knowing.
Android phones support scanning of documents natively – you don’t need to install any apps or even change any settings to use this function. All you need is your document and your normal Android camera. Launch it and point it at the document. It may take a few seconds, but a yellow outline with a scan button in the middle will appear.
In order to get a scan – which will be of the section within the outline only – tap the Scan in the middle. Unlike a regular photo, the scan will be cropped automatically and turned to be the right way up – meaning even if your camera is looking at it upside down, the scan will be the right way up.
Android will also apply some minor white-correction to make sure that the contrast of your scan is preserved. Because of all this, it will take longer than usual until the new image appears in your camera roll – it may take a few seconds. That’s all there is to it!
Some tips on scanning with an Android camera:
- Make sure you have sufficient lighting. The lighter it is, the better the results will be.
- If the yellow outline doesn’t capture everything you want, adjust the position of the phone a little until it does. More light may also help.
- If the yellow outline covers more than you want, you can use a finger or small object to ‘mark’ the edge – your camera should pick up the ‘new’ end of your document. Alternatively, you can just crop your image later.
- Don’t press the normal photo button or your phone will take a normal picture of the whole visible area – click on the Scan button specifically.
Leonard says
Is there a way to go into scan mode? Without that information the article is unfortunately useless.
nm says
Irritating article. The scan yellow outline appears if the thing you are photographing looks sufficiently rectangular. But if the thing you are photographing isn’t rectangular or have sharp differences in color than then the background it won’t show up. And so for as I can tell you can’t make it appear. And if the document has a photo of a person in it it may choose portrait mode instead. So far as I can tell, we can’t *tell* it to go into scan mode. It’s *great* when it works but really irritating when it doesn’t.
Dawn Self says
What does the scan button look like? Where is it located on my camera page?
Karen Zipser says
So what’s the difference between a scan and a photo? Do I get a pdf instead of a jpg?