Aims of the lesson

• Understand the process of scanning documents with a mobile device
• Be able to scan documents with the devices you have
• Know how to correct perspective, colour and contrast
• Know the limitations of scanning documents
• Using Optical charter recognition on images of documents
• Know when scanned documents are inappropriate

What is document scanning?

• Document scanning is taking a photo of a document and formatting the image so that it looks like a document and not a photo.
• Scanned documents are image files this means that the text is not selectable, searchable or editable.
• Optical charter recognition (OCR) apps take a scanned document interpreted the image of the text and converts it back into editable text. This often losses formatting within the document and is not   always 100% reliable.
• With Scanners the output image is all ready formatted as a document.

Why do we need to Scan Documents?

• When you only have the hard copy of a document in a foreign language and you need digital version to run through a translator.
• When you have signed a document and you need to email it to somebody.
• When you want to share something you have written on paper with somebody and there isn’t a photo copier handy.
• When you want to add hand written notes to a digital document such as OneNote to keep all the content in one place.
• When you want to keep a copy of a document before you post off the original.

Why do we need to think about legality?

• If you are scanning a signed contract or other legal document, will it be legally binding?
  • A contract does not need to be formal. An oral agreement is just as good as a written contract. The only purpose of signed writing is to evidence what was agreed.
  • If you want to make a scanned document official there are various methods of adding a digital signature which are recognised by the law. The law also recognises that emails can be binding legal document.
  • However if it is a document which is likely to be contested such as a will then an original document would be preferable.
• If you are scanning book will it infringe copyright?
• You can scan a book you own for personal use but distributing it would infringe copyright.

How to scan a document with an android device

• Download an appropriate document scanning app “Docufy” is a free android app.

   

• Take a photo of a document. Avoid shadows on the document and use a dark background and make sure you capture the corners.
• Fix the perspective by selecting the corners of the document.
• Enhance the image to make the text as clear as possible.
• Export the document as a PDF.

 

How to OCR a document with an android device

• Download an appropriate OCR app. “OCR Instantly Free”  is a free optical charter recognition app.

   

• Take a photo of a document. Avoid shadows on the document try to make the camera square on and make sure you capture all the text.
• Crop the document to remove areas with no text.
• Enhance the image to make the text as clear as possible.
• Copy the output text and paste it in to a document or email

 

How to scan a document with an iOS device

• Download an appropriate document scanning app “Adobe Acrobat” is a free iOS app.

   

• Chose Scan.
• Take a photo of a document. Avoid shadows on the document and use a dark background and make sure you capture the corners.
• Enhance the image to make the text as clear as possible.
• Save the document as a PDF .

 

How to OCR a document with an iOS device

• Download an appropriate OCR app. “Doc Scanner + OCR: Free” is a free optical charter recognition app that also does PDFs.

   

• Take a photo of a document. Avoid shadows on the document try to make the camera square on and make sure you capture all the text.
• Fix the perspective by selecting the corners of the document.
• Enhance the image to make the text as clear as possible.
• Click on the OCR button and wait for it to process.
• Copy the output text and paste it in to a document or email.

 

Activity

1. Pick a suitable printed A4 document try to find one with an image and a table.
2. With an appropriate app scan the document.
3. Export the document as a PDF.
4. With the same document use an appropriate OCR app and scan the document again.
5. Save the text in a word processor file.
6. Look at the PDF and word processor file and see the difference between the two.

Conclusion

• Using you mobile device as a scanner can be very convenient and save toy lots of time.
• It is important to know when to use a scanning app and when to use an OCR app.
• It’s important to know how you stand legally when it comes to emailing scanned documents.