FineScanner Turns iPhone Camera Into Scanner Need a portable scanner?

The FineScanner app turns iPad camera into scanner.

Use your iPad or iPhone camera to produce neatly scanned pages with FineScanner app.

Short notice on this flash one-day sale, but the FineScanner app is worth the $1.99 it regularly costs to have this capability on the go. (Update: as of 28 Feb 2014, the app is still free.)

The FineScanner app – download it from iTunes here – is created by ABBYY, a leading provider of OCR and other scanning software used by libraries, archives, and museums.

Use your device’s camera, edit the photo as necessary, and export it as a PDF via mail, or into Dropbox, Evernote, or Facebook. You can even send files straight to your printer from your device. FineScanner is available for both iPhone and iPad and compared to the price of handheld scanners, this is a great bargain.

FineScanner Turns iPad Camera Into ScannerTwo tips for using FineScanner: wait until the camera locks in on the image to minimize shaking and try to find even light to minimize glare.

CNET, the Consumer Reports of hardware and software, reviewed FineScanner and noted:

FineScanner is an all-purpose mobile scanner that can capture text from anywhere anytime. Use your iPhone camera to scan documents, receipts, magazine articles, notes, recipes, pictures, charts, tables, presentation slides, whiteboards or even billboards on the street and save the results in PDF or JPEG. Powered by ABBYYs unique image processing technology, the application is fast, effective, and delivers very high quality results. Key features and benefits: Scan any printed or hand-written texts anywhere and anytime. With your iPhone in your pocket, you no longer need an unwieldy scanner! Easily create documents of any size using your iPhone camera: with FineScanner, you can create, handle, and enhance separate images or large multi-page documents. Create electronic copies of any type of printed content: copy paper documents, contracts, articles, instructions, brochures or any other materials in any language! Excellent visual quality guaranteed with automatic detection of page boundaries, easy brightness and contrast settings, and ability to save images in black-and-white or grayscale. PDF and JPEG support: save and export scanner-quality images to JPEG and documents in cross-platform PDF. Built-in file archiving feature: save results in a file archive with a handy search facility!

If you want scanning capability on the go, try FineScanner on your smartphone.