How to Scan Documents with Your iPhone

The digital era is well upon us, and if you’re still only keeping physical copies of all your documents, then it’s probably time to start going digital. Here’s how to scan documents with your iPhone and save them to your computer as a digital backup.

There are some things that you simply just need to keep physical copies of, like tax returns, loan contracts and other very important documents, but there are also types of files that you should keep, but you don’t necessarily need a physical copy of, like receipts, bank statements, etc. This is where scanning documents with your iPhone comes in real handy.

No one likes an overflowing filing cabinet, so more and more users are starting scan their documents and store them digitally. Then, if they ever need that document for something in the future, they can print it off and it’ll be like it was never a digital copy in the first place.

There are a lot of different apps that let you scan documents and save them to your computer, but only a few are worthy of your time. We’ll go over the most popular options and show you how to scan documents for the best results.

The Problem with Dedicated Document Scanners

Technically, there aren’t really any problems with dedicated document scanners. Devices from the likes of Doxie, Neat and Fujitsu are fantastic document scanners for those whose jobs rely on constant document scanning, or if you just want an easy-to-use document scanner for your home office with your personal documents.

However, these scanners are kind of overkill for most users, so paying a couple hundred of dollars for one really isn’t worth it for the most part.

Furthermore, if you get the right scanning app on your iPhone, the quality of scanned documents will be pretty much be almost as good as a dedicated document scanner anyway. It might not be as good, but again, you don’t really need the best equipment out there to get the job done well.

How to Scan Documents with Your iPhone

There are two apps that I highly recommend checking out if you’re wanting to get into document scanning with your iPhone.

The first app is Evernote, which is a note-taking app for the most part, but it has a powerful document scanning feature that lets you take a picture of a document and then upload it to one of your notebooks in Evernote. From there, you can organize it however you’d like and even export as a .PDF file to your computer.

To access the document scanning feature in Evernote, just open up the app and tap on the Camera icon at the top. From there, you can take a photo of your document, and Evernote even puts borders on the screen so that you can line up the document in order to get the perfect scan.

You can use this feature in Evernote for business cards, regular photos, and even Post-It notes.

If you’d rather have a dedicated app for purely scanning documents, Scanner Pro is perhaps the best app there is for the job. It’s a bit pricey at $6.99, but it comes with a heap of nice features.

After you scan a document, Scanner Pro allows you to change the brightness and contrast of a document to make it as readable as possible, and you can even change whether you want it in full color, black and white, or gray scale.

Furthermore, after you save the scanned document, you can either email it to someone, print it off, fax it, or upload it to your Dropbox, Google Drive or Evernote account.

Plus, I find that Scanner Pro is a little better at scanning documents in the first place, so if you want the best possible scanning abilities from your iPhone, Scanner Pro is probably the way to go if you have a few extra dollars to spare.