Genealogists
love scanners. We use them to digitize photos and documents. Find a
picture of your great-grandparents? Scan it. How about the immigration
document you found at the archives? Scan it. You may not know it, but
you may already have a decent scanner in your pocket.
Technically, the typical desktop scanner is really a camera. A somewhat
specialized camera, to be sure, but a camera nonetheless. In fact, many
people don't use scanners at all. They simply use a good-quality
digital camera. Now, thanks to some software, you can use your Apple
iPhone camera as a scanner.
Scanner Pro 1.2 is the
latest version of a popular iPhone application which transforms the
device into portable scanner. You can snap a picture of a document or
of an old picture, and Scanner Pro then converts the image to a PDF
file in the same manner as a scanner.
The product becomes a
bit more interesting when it is used in conjunction with two other
products produced by other companies: Dropbox and Print n Share from
EuroSmartz.
I have written before about Dropbox at http://blog.eogn.com/eastmans_online_genealogy/2009/09/dropbox-why-you-need-this-program.html and at http://blog.eogn.com/eastmans_online_genealogy/2009/11/update-Dropbox-why-you-need-this-program.html. It is one of my favorite applications and has already been installed on my iPhone for some time. Dropbox copies files to your other computers (desktop, laptop, handheld, etc.) as well as storing a copy on the Dropbox servers. Dropbox works on Windows, Macintosh, iPhone, and a number of other computer systems. By using Dropbox, the PDF images that you scan (or photograph) on your iPhone quickly get copied to your desktop computer as well as to any other computers you own.
Print n Share is a popular printing program for the iPhone. As shipped from Apple, the iPhone does not have any capability to print directly. You can copy files from an iPhone to another computer and then print from that other system; but, the iPhone itself doesn't have a built-in PRINT command. Print n Share adds that command. You can print to any networked printer if the proper software is installed.
Thanks to the integration with these two other products, Scanner Pro 1.2 for the iPhone allows owners of these three applications to seamlessly scan and then print documents to any USB, WIFI, Bluetooth or network printer via a Mac or PC. In addition, the same users can also upload scanned documents to Dropbox cloud storage.
Once the PDF file is stored on your desktop system, you can use other programs to edit pictures or even to perform OCR conversion to text. Scanner Pro 1.2 simply converts the camera's picture to PDF; all other functions are performed by other programs. The integration with Dropbox and with Print n Share is nice, but you still need to obtain those programs elsewhere.
I found the Scanner Pro software works surprisingly well. Most of the images I made were easily readable once they were printed. They were not as high quality as the original photos or documents, but were equal to or better than the typical photocopy. That being said, the iPhone does not have a built in flash and the Scanner Pro software works best with bright images. I'd suggest you make sure you have lots of light shining on the document or picture before you snap the iPhone shutter.
Scanner Pro version 1.2 is available from the Apple App Store for $6.99. You can read more about this software at http://readdle.com/products/scannerpro
Dropbox is also available in the App Store as a free program and will store up to two gigabytes of data. Larger storage capacities are available for modest fees. For more information about Dropbox, read my earlier articles at http://blog.eogn.com/eastmans_online_genealogy/2009/09/dropbox-why-you-need-this-program.html and at http://blog.eogn.com/eastmans_online_genealogy/2009/11/update-Dropbox-why-you-need-this-program.html as well as at the program's home page at http://www.dropbox.com.
Print n Share by EuroSmartz Ltd is also available in the Apple App Store for $6.99. More information may be found at http://www.eurosmartz.com.
For a total investment of about fourteen dollars, you can now use that pocket scanner you already may own: the Apple iPhone.
