Scan to PDF (Document Scanner)

About the Scan to PDF (Document Scanner)

Turn paper into a PDF with the camera you already have. Point your phone or laptop camera at a page — or choose photos you took earlier, or a scanned PDF — and each page’s edges are found automatically. Pages photographed at an angle come out rectangular, shadows and uneven light are evened out so the paper turns white, and every page joins one PDF in the order you choose.

Drag any page’s four corners to adjust it, turn pages, give each page a look (enhanced colour, greyscale, or black & white for the smallest files) and choose A4, US Letter or a page that matches each scan. Everything happens on your device: the camera picture, the photos and the PDF never leave it.

Common uses

• Sending signed forms, contracts and letters as one PDF without a scanner.
• Collecting receipts and invoices for expense claims and tax records.
• Saving class notes, homework and whiteboards as clean, readable pages.
• Turning a photographed document that came in crooked into a straight copy.

Getting a clean scan

• Put the page on a surface that contrasts with it — a dark table under white paper is ideal — so the edges can be found.
• Light it evenly and avoid glare: daylight from a window beside you works better than an overhead lamp straight above. Use Light on phones that have a torch.
• Fill most of the frame with the page and keep all four corners in view. A slight angle is fine: the corners are used to straighten the page.
• Hold still for a moment when you press Capture page; a sharp photo matters more than a perfectly level one.

Which look to choose

• Original: the photo as taken, only straightened — for photos and pages with pictures.
• Enhanced colour: the paper’s brightness is measured across the page and divided out, so shadows and yellow light disappear and the paper turns white while ink, stamps and signatures keep their colour.
• Greyscale: the same, without colour.
• Black & white: every dot is black or white, saved as a 1-bit image at a higher resolution (200 or 300 dpi). Text stays crisp and the file is many times smaller than a colour page. Use Keep faint marks (under Edit) to keep pencil or light print, or to drop smudges.

Page size

With Match each page, a scan shaped like A4 (210 × 297 mm) or US Letter (8.5 × 11 in) — within 3% — gets exactly that page size, so it prints at its real size. Other shapes, such as receipts, cards or a half sheet, keep their shape on a page as large as fits on your usual paper, so each one prints on a single sheet at 100%. Choosing A4 or US Letter puts every scan on that paper instead, as large as fits, turned to landscape for wide scans.

Searchable text

A scan is a picture of the page, so its words can’t be searched, selected or read aloud yet. After Create PDF, Make it searchable (OCR) opens the file in OCR PDF — a Pro tool you can try free — which recognises the text and adds it to the pages, also on your device. Where the browser can’t pass the file on directly, download the PDF first and choose it there.

Limitations

• Edges are found by looking for the page’s straight outline. On a background of the same colour as the page, with a hand over a corner or in poor light it may miss; then drag the corners by hand or keep the whole photo.
• A page is straightened as a flat rectangle: the curve of a thick book near its spine stays curved.
• Pages are saved as images. Their text can’t be selected or searched until you run OCR on the PDF.
• The camera needs your permission and a browser that allows it on this page; some in-app browsers block it. Add photos or a PDF always works. Torch control is only offered where the browser supports it.
• Up to 50 pages per PDF. Photos are worked on at up to 4,096 pixels on their longest side, which is more than a 300 dpi A4 page needs.

Privacy

Everything happens in your browser. What you enter or open here is not uploaded or stored by MySmartCoPilot.