iPhone App: PageScanner

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litchie
Posts: 18
Joined: 04 Mar 2014, 00:53

Re: iPhone Apps for Smartphone Book Scanning (Tests & Review

Post by litchie »

daniel_reetz wrote:litchie, I understand that you would probably prefer to do all support through the app, but your presence is appreciated here, and you are always welcome to ask for ideas and improvements from this community.

Personally, I would really like to see an Android app with this functionality. Is that something you're considering?
Thank you. I love this community and learn a lot here. Actually I visit here daily:)

I keep all the core functions in C in case one day when we want to move it another platform. But there are still a lot of things to improve in the app, so no plan for android yet..
sixtysix
Posts: 34
Joined: 23 Jun 2009, 13:07

Re: iPhone Apps for Smartphone Book Scanning (Tests & Review

Post by sixtysix »

litchie
Is it possible to send the finished pdf file to a PC?

thanks
TaylorR137
Posts: 4
Joined: 04 Mar 2014, 00:52

Re: iPhone Apps for Smartphone Book Scanning (Tests & Review

Post by TaylorR137 »

You can email the pdf to yourself, or plug your iphone into iTunes, click on the apps tab where you manage apps, and then scroll to the bottom and transfer the pdfs the same way you do with iBooks.

I have a few suggestions, the first is flash: there needs to be an option to use the built in flash while doing a continuous scan.
-Perhaps ad a grid to the screen so that it is easier to get the text straight.
-When selecting images from an album or camera roll the user should be able to select multiple images.
-Export PDFs directly to iBooks
-Some form of even/odd merging, I find it is easer to scan the even and odd pages separately, but currently I am using a tool called pdfsam to merge the PDFs.

I've been using your app with an iPhone 4 to scan textbooks (mostly physics and math - so no OCR use) and get them on my new kindle DX, and I must say your app is the most elegant solution I've found. Thanks for your hard work!
univurshul
Posts: 496
Joined: 04 Mar 2014, 00:53

Re: iPhone Apps for Smartphone Book Scanning (Tests & Review

Post by univurshul »

TaylorR137 wrote: I have a few suggestions, the first is flash: there needs to be an option to use the built in flash while doing a continuous scan.
-Perhaps ad a grid to the screen so that it is easier to get the text straight.
-When selecting images from an album or camera roll the user should be able to select multiple images.
-Export PDFs directly to iBooks
-Some form of even/odd merging, I find it is easer to scan the even and odd pages separately, but currently I am using a tool called pdfsam to merge the PDFs.

I've been using your app with an iPhone 4 to scan textbooks (mostly physics and math - so no OCR use) and get them on my new kindle DX, and I must say your app is the most elegant solution I've found. Thanks for your hard work!
I'll email your suggestions directly to litchie, as he might be not be receiving all prompts on this discussion.

Being able to zoom and have a 'set' batch-focus will help too. ...But, yeah it's really good for an iphone app. I'm watching 3 other commercial app developers mimic his work.
TaylorR137
Posts: 4
Joined: 04 Mar 2014, 00:52

Re: iPhone Apps for Smartphone Book Scanning (Tests & Review

Post by TaylorR137 »

I submitted those suggestions through the app as well, I was only hoping that by posting them here others could comment as to their usefulness.
univurshul
Posts: 496
Joined: 04 Mar 2014, 00:53

Re: iPhone Apps for Smartphone Book Scanning (Tests & Review

Post by univurshul »

Excellent. Yeah, sometimes I forget there's multiple channels to get his attention.

I've been working on producing hardware that works with PageScanner, and haven't had a ton of time lately to build a debug/wish-list report to litchie.

Thanks for your ideas. Have you scanned books in the 'hundreds-of-pages' range with the iPhone 4? I could use some feedback about hardware ideas that'll make an ideal mobile scanner.
litchie
Posts: 18
Joined: 04 Mar 2014, 00:53

Re: iPhone Apps for Smartphone Book Scanning (Tests & Review

Post by litchie »

TaylorR137 wrote:You can email the pdf to yourself, or plug your iphone into iTunes, click on the apps tab where you manage apps, and then scroll to the bottom and transfer the pdfs the same way you do with iBooks.

I have a few suggestions, the first is flash: there needs to be an option to use the built in flash while doing a continuous scan.
-Perhaps ad a grid to the screen so that it is easier to get the text straight.
-When selecting images from an album or camera roll the user should be able to select multiple images.
-Export PDFs directly to iBooks
-Some form of even/odd merging, I find it is easer to scan the even and odd pages separately, but currently I am using a tool called pdfsam to merge the PDFs.

I've been using your app with an iPhone 4 to scan textbooks (mostly physics and math - so no OCR use) and get them on my new kindle DX, and I must say your app is the most elegant solution I've found. Thanks for your hard work!
Really great suggestions! I have a feeling you are from this forum:)

Just a few updates regarding the new version in review:

- More friendly UI
- Folder merging!
- OCR in folder (slow)
- Use crop points rather than ruler now. And you can rotate the image.
litchie
Posts: 18
Joined: 04 Mar 2014, 00:53

Re: iPhone Apps for Smartphone Book Scanning (Tests & Review

Post by litchie »

univurshul wrote:
TaylorR137 wrote: I have a few suggestions, the first is flash: there needs to be an option to use the built in flash while doing a continuous scan.
-Perhaps ad a grid to the screen so that it is easier to get the text straight.
-When selecting images from an album or camera roll the user should be able to select multiple images.
-Export PDFs directly to iBooks
-Some form of even/odd merging, I find it is easer to scan the even and odd pages separately, but currently I am using a tool called pdfsam to merge the PDFs.

I've been using your app with an iPhone 4 to scan textbooks (mostly physics and math - so no OCR use) and get them on my new kindle DX, and I must say your app is the most elegant solution I've found. Thanks for your hard work!
I'll email your suggestions directly to litchie, as he might be not be receiving all prompts on this discussion.

Being able to zoom and have a 'set' batch-focus will help too. ...But, yeah it's really good for an iphone app. I'm watching 3 other commercial app developers mimic his work.
I don't have an iphone4 now, but I think zoom function in most camera apps is fake, they just apply a scale-up transform, the underlying image and its quality is not affected. No doubt it is more friendly, I will think about it.

What do you mean by "set batch focus"? I would like to implement it if it can help!
TaylorR137
Posts: 4
Joined: 04 Mar 2014, 00:52

Re: iPhone Apps for Smartphone Book Scanning (Tests & Review

Post by TaylorR137 »

When the user is taking a continuous shot the focus continually adjusts, this might be a good idea if you are shooting free-hand but with a stable setup it would be nice to set focus once and then have it only re-focus when tapped.

As for scanning longer books, Page Scanner works well. The high quality setting is needed for scanning large books, especially mathematics and physics equations (trust me you don't want to be scratching your head for a week because you read a t as the greek letter tau). A smaller textbook can come out to over 150MB, so it's best to break it up into chapters.

Reading on the kindle dx has been a nice experience, especially for the smaller textbooks and kindle-formatted books, but PDFs with small print leave a better zoom feature to be desired.

The only hardware I've built is made of card board and duct tape, using indirect light from a window, or from the Fluorescent bulbs in my office. Its an iterative process, but I've been satisfied with the results.
litchie
Posts: 18
Joined: 04 Mar 2014, 00:53

Re: iPhone Apps for Smartphone Book Scanning (Tests & Review

Post by litchie »

Get it! I will see if there is any way to set camera focus.

I have a DX too.. I prefer to read in landscape mode, to have bigger texts. But I find sometimes it doesn't zoom in for certain PDF documents. That is really confusing.
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