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Re: What’s new: Scanner App

What’s new: Scanner App

DBXCommunity
Community Manager

There’s nothing worse than forgetting an idea, or losing an important piece of paper. The one thing we never lose, and usually don’t forget is our phone - so now with the Dropbox Scanner App, you can save, organize, and share important documents right from your phone. Dropbox Scan is a standalone app that lets you quickly transform all your physical documents into high-quality PDFs. It’s everything you love about doc scanner in the Dropbox app—but even faster and easier to use. The app is available to iOS users in English-speaking markets, and you can sign into Dropbox with your corp email or a Basic, Plus, or Professional account. Whatever the situation, whether it’s a piece of paper, a receipt or even a whiteboard of notes, you can conveniently save high quality scans to Dropbox.

 

Scanner app .png

  • Receipts - Take the pain out of your next expense report, and save receipts as you go. 
  • Whiteboard drawings - Never feel rushed in a meeting or presentation again. Just use the doc scanner, and an image of the whiteboard will be uploaded as a PDF or PNG to Dropbox.
  • Contracts, bills, and invoices - Now your filing cabinet can be digital, and take up a lot less space. And of course, you can share it with others who need access. 
  • Photos - We’ve all taken a photo of a photo, but now you can scan them and keep them safe, with the same phone - just better results. 
  • Business cards - Never lose an important connection! Easily upload business cards from meetings, conferences and trade shows—right from your mobile device.
  • Magazine clippings - Instead of ripping out a piece of a magazine or newspaper scrap you will inevitably lose, just scan the page or excerpt into Dropbox using the document scanner.
  • Personal cards and notes - Scan those thoughtful personal notes into Dropbox for keepsakes without the clutter.
  • Handouts - Scan in materials from classes or seminars for easy reference— they’re a lot less likely to get crumpled or torn in a digital setting! 
  • Napkin sketches - Never lose your next big idea again.
 
There’s a Smart crop feature, Smart folder suggestions based on where you've saved recent scans, and you can even edit the scan for clarity! 
 
You can probably tell we’re a little excited about this one! Which of these uses are you excited about? 
48 Replies 48

JackLv
Helpful | Level 5

Hi @Gregg T. I currently use Adobe Scan which works great but does not allow me to save to DropBox

Gregg T.
Helpful | Level 6

Great analysis Seraphin.  There is a control for contrast in Scan but it's not active for the documents I've snapped so far.  Maybe it's dependent on using the monochrome image (black and white)?  Don't know.

 

I think it's hard to compare file sizes between devices because the color gamut (number of colors captured) varies so significantly.  If you capture fewer colors, the file size will, of course, be smaller since it's representing less information. I think what's important, instead of file size, might be how crisp and readable you find the text, especially in a print, which influences how accurate/fast the OCR process will be.

 

I don't see why having a stand-alone app matters, anyway... Do you?

Seraphin
Helpful | Level 5

Gregg, I'll have to look for that contrast control. My file size comparisons were for similar format and quality (as in "readable 8-pt text" in b&w). There isn't any control over capture resolution, so that can't really count as a factor. From a use case perspective, these were different file sizes for effectively the same output. Now, if they provided some control over capture resolution, we could have a meaningful discussion of what settings (in addition to the ones already provided) deliver the best balance of usable output vs. file size.

 

But Dropbox isn't alone with file size inflation for PDF docs. I compared output once between Adobe Acrobat, Camscanner, Microsoft Lens, and maybe one other app to see which one worked best for me. They were all bloated to an extent. I opted for Dropbox primarily because I like working in the Dropbox cloud with its straighforward file organization and sharing schemes.

 

To be clear, I really like the Dropbox (main app) scanning function. It has some room for improvement, but it is still one of the better mobile PDF capture options available. I'm not so sure that Dropbox Scan brings ME any benefit, besides saving a few clicks, and perhaps providing a slightly different contrast result that might be favorable in certain situations, but to others, these differences might very well be killer features.

 

EDIT: I ran a few more test scans. Dropbox Scan's lowest quality setting seems similar to the main app's highest quality setting. You get a lot more dithering at the lower quality settings with the main Dropbox app. So... their quality settings are not really equivalent. It's possible that Scan captures at a higher resolution to start with; I would have to extract images and compare the bitmaps to really know. Also, I stumbled upon multi-page scanning with Scan. That's a big plus. I also stumbled upon the contrast control with the main app - good to have it.

Software and Platform apps
Explorer | Level 4
😄

AlistairD
Explorer | Level 3

Really pleased that part of my annual Dropbox fee is being spent on developing iOS apps that my Android handset can't use.

Eric Delisle
Explorer | Level 3

App is interesting, works nicely on a Android 10, but image auto acquirying system is to nervous!, app should let us take the picture without trying to do by itself, at least have the option to switch off that facility or make it more slow.

Once you take your shoot, we should be able to magnify image ( on the picture visualization screen), so we can approve the picture quality before going on.

The screen for adjusting the picture is very good. It shows the entire picture, even if the nervous sistem acquired only part of it, we can adjust correctly to the edges with the magnifying sistem.

Saving  is simple and efficient.

 

 

edc1951
New member | Level 2

Completely agree.  It gets very tiring. And it would be nice to have an answer from Dropbox about when they DO plan to have it available.

lindajbrander
New member | Level 2

Amy - given that there are more android users than iOS, I would have thought 'the team' would be aware there 

would be interest.  There are more than 2 billion android users on the planet for goodness sake!!!

JackLv
Helpful | Level 5
Hi Gregg, I do the same, it would make life much easier if I could just save directly to drop box as I use it a lot. Maybe we should be tasking to Adobe.

Mary Rose L
New member | Level 2

I am interesting in the Photo scanner and Magazine/clippings scanner. Please let me know what this involves by return email. Thank you

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