A phone camera is good enough to replace a scanner for most paperwork: ID copies for an application, signed forms, receipts for an expense claim. The difference between a messy photo and a clean scan comes down to a few habits.
Before you take the photo
- Light. Daylight from a window is best. Avoid the phone's flash, which leaves a bright spot in the middle of the page.
- Background. Put the page on a dark, plain surface. The contrast makes the edges of the page easy to see.
- Shadows. Hold the phone so your own shadow does not fall on the page.
- Angle. Hold the phone flat above the page. A small tilt is fine because the corners can be fixed afterwards.
Step by step
- Open Scan to PDF on your phone and tap Take a photo. Your camera opens.
- Photograph the first page, then add the next pages the same way. You can also choose photos you already took.
- Tap Adjust corners on a page and drag the four corners onto the corners of the paper. The page is straightened as if it had been scanned flat.
- Choose a look: Black and white for text documents, Grayscale for pages with pencil or light writing, Color for photos, stamps or coloured forms.
- Put the pages in order, then save the PDF.
Which look to choose
- Black and white gives the cleanest, most "photocopied" look and the smallest file. Grey shadows and paper colour disappear. This is the best choice for letters, contracts and printed forms.
- Grayscale keeps light handwriting and pencil marks that black and white could lose.
- Color is for documents where colour matters: stamps, signatures in blue ink that must look original, or ID cards.
Good to know
- The pages in the PDF are pictures, so you cannot search or copy the text. That is normal for scans.
- If the file is too big to email, run it through Compress PDF.
- Scanning happens on your phone. Copies of IDs and other private papers are not uploaded anywhere.