At some point of our smartphone-owning lives, we all have resorted to clicking close-up pictures of certain important documents, whose soft copies were hard to come by at that moment. While the ‘Macro’ mode in the camera app was no doubt useful, it also had many of its own shortcomings. Most notable was the fact that the images rarely had good clarity and if it was text, legibility was almost absent. This is exactly where MDScan steps in but does it do the job? Read on to find out.
Starting with the App
To use MDScan, all you need is an Android smartphone with a good enough camera at the rear. Once installed, starting up the app presents you with these options,
- Camera
- Batch-mode
- My Scans
- Import
- Help
- Settings
Using the App
First of all, make sure that the document, worksheet, menu, map or anything else that you need to scan is laid out on a flat surface. Also make sure to wipe off any excessive dust or stains as these can mar the eventual scanned image. Once done with that, start the MDScan app. Click the picture with the app and it will take a few seconds to process before displaying the scanned image. Now, the app needs you to decide which format the document should be saved in (landscape or portrait). You can also import pictures that are already present in your phone’s gallery.
After this step, the app recognizes the document’s borders. Usually, the app does a good job of recognizing the borders correctly after which you can crop the rest of the unwanted part and ensure your document is in the right format. In case the app does not do a good job of determining the borders, you can always do the same yourself manually.
You must also tell the app about the kind of document you’ve scanned, which results in a better optimized document. For example, you can say that your document is black on white (black text on white dock), black on color doc, white on black doc, watermarked papers, business cards or even street shorts. This is followed by options to alter the markings of the image as well as rotating it.
After this, you can save the image and choose to edit, export or share it with different people. Some of the editing options users are offered include brightness/contrast, automatic image correction, grey tones and many more. A slight drawback here is the absence of the feature that allows users to draw on their scanned documents. This helps to select particular sections or passages from the entire document.
Once you are done with the editing, the image can be saved in JPEG, ZIP or PDF formats before sending it out or sharing with other people.
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