Scan a document or picture (2024)

FAQs

Is it better to scan or take a picture of a document? ›

With your phone camera, you'll have to crop the image your take, and you might not be able to crop precisely if the documents come in an unusual format. With a scanner, documents of any size are automatically cropped, whether it's a business card or a legal page. The scanner's image quality is superior in general.

Place documents face down on the printer or scanner surface. Align photo within the arrows or grids on the device. Close the lid if there is one. Press scan on the scanner or use the scanning program on your computer.

Scan a document

At the bottom right, tap Camera . Point your device's camera at a document. A blue line outlines the document. This indicates where the picture will be cropped.

Due to the relatively small size of JPEGs, you might find them preferable to PDFs because they're likely to take up less space on your hard drive, portable disk, or cloud. However, PDF files can be more reliable to store documents and images.

Some cons of using a photo scanning service are: Risk of damage or loss when sending original photos through the mail. Cost; while some companies advertise a low per-photo rate, you might find the total cost much higher once you read the fine print about volume pricing, additional fees for retouching, and other charges.

Phone-based scanners certainly fit the bill when needing to scan documents or photos when no other scanners are available. However, for those seeking a higher quality scan, a stand-alone scanner always delivers an easier scanning experience as well as a higher quality scan.

Download and install an antivirus program

TotalAV: TotalAV is an easy-to-use software that offers a free antivirus plan so you can test it on your phone before you commit. It includes auto antivirus and malware scanning, real-time protection, phishing protection, and more.

TIFF and PDF are the most popular file types for scanning documents. TIFF (Tagged Image File Format ) was created by the Aldus Corporation in order to to provide high-resolution images in printable, lossless quality. It is accepted that these files are several times the size of a lossy compressed JPEG image.

JPEG (/ˈdʒeɪpɛɡ/ JAY-peg, short for Joint Photographic Experts Group) is a commonly used method of lossy compression for digital images, particularly for those images produced by digital photography. The degree of compression can be adjusted, allowing a selectable tradeoff between storage size and image quality.

Should I Scan as PNG or JPEG? ›

PNG is best suited for saving images with fewer colors and graphics with transparent areas, such as logos, icons, badges, diagrams, and scanned copies of documents. Both JPEG and PNG formats allow you to get image sizes that have optimal quality/file size ratios.

Taking photos

Use a tripod whenever possible. The lens should be positioned parallel to the page. The distance between the camera and the document should be selected so that the entire page fits within the frame when you zoom in. In most cases this distance will be between 50 and 60 cm.

The most notable difference between document scanning and digital imaging is that document scanning makes a digital copy of an existing file as-is. Whereas digital imaging offers the opportunity to alter information on the file after being scanned to digital format.

Scanning provides much higher resolution images – up to 6400 dpi – wow! That's great resolution for printing. There is no need to focus a scanner, as the scanner sensor passes about 1″ away from your work of art, and everything is always in focus.

Phone-based scanners certainly fit the bill when needing to scan documents or photos when no other scanners are available. However, for those seeking a higher quality scan, a stand-alone scanner always delivers an easier scanning experience as well as a higher quality scan.