Your iPhone Becomes a Document Scanner with Scanner Pro

Expense reports are a necessity for those who travel frequently for business reasons, and in some cases, it is necessary to submit copies of receipts in PDF format to some sort of expense system online in order to have out of pocket expenses recouped.  Although the majority of people own some sort of document scanner at their homes or offices, people do not generally travel with them, although their iPhone 3GS will always accompany of them, and this phones excellent macro lens support means that uploading documents is a very feasible reality.  Scanner Pro is the application that answers this need, and allows you to make use of your iPhone to capture any documents you find you need to.

Although it isn’t the first application to promise to deliver this type of service, its added features make it a better choice.  The sharing features it offers in particular are of interest, especially the fact that it offers direct support for uploading to Evernote.  It’s also great that you are able to use it to transfer your documents by means of Wi-Fi while at the same time protecting them by means of a password in order to make sure they are only viewed by the people they are meant for.

It has a very direct, easy to understand user interface and you begin by either taking a picture of your document by means of the iPhones camera, or by using one that you’ve already taken that is inside your phone’s photo library.  You are able to select edges so as to achieve a better framing effect, or simply select it all.  You are then able to decide on color or convert it into a grayscale image if you so desire, and there is also an image stabilization feature, software based, that enables you to take a better quality image from the first.  Once you have your shot you can change the Contrast and Brightness of the picture, and then upload it to your WebDAV server; Dropbox; MobileMe; iDisk; Photo Library; or Evernet.  Should you also have the optional app Print n Share installed on your phone you can choose to print it as well, and you are able to email it directly from inside the application also.

It worked wonderfully during testing, and it’s nice that you can actually integrate more than 1 scan into 1 PDF with several pages from right inside the app.  There is unfortunately no method of combining multiple PDFs afterwards, so you will have to do them all together while you’re making them inside the application.  Something else good that other applications should consider providing is the help manual that is inbuilt.