On Wednesday, Adobe Systems launched a free scanning app called Adobe Scan for Android and iOS. It sets itself apart from the bunch in that it uses text recognition and machine learning to convert physical docs into editable PDFs.
The application is the latest member of the Adobe Document Cloud family, and the creative software giant offers seamless integration with other services like Adobe Reader. It is also looking at ways in which it can integrate with other proprietary platforms already.
Like Google, Adobe has taken steps in the right direction to meet the demands of an increasingly mobile world, and it is now using AI to expand the reach and capabilities of its tools.
What is Adobe Scan and how to use it
Adobe Scan is a digital tool that turns your smartphone’s camera into a scanner. It requires an Adobe Document Cloud account to work, though, but those are free to make for everyone.
For starters, all you need to do is pointing your phone at the document, and Adobe’s machine learning technology will automatically select the area that is relevant to you.
Be it a regular document, a receipt, a business card, an invitation, or simply text written on the wall of a gallery, Adobe Scan can trace the physical space of the content, render it and turn it into a digital PDF file.
It even works with digital documents like presentation slides or projected images. Adobe’s artificial intelligence framework, Adobe Sensei, takes control of all the image processing workloads that come with auto-cropping, detecting boundaries, correcting perspectives, cleaning shadows, and more.
You need Adobe Reader to edit PDFs digitized by Adobe Scan
Once you have scanned your document with Adobe Scan, you can save it to the Document Cloud for easy access to the many services offered by the creative software giant.
Right now, the most essential of them all is Adobe Reader, which you need to unlock the full potential of your digital documents. Regardless of the source, Adobe’s text recognition algorithms make it possible for you to edit text within the doc using the same original font.
The scanning tool goes as far as to let you combine elements in a PDF on your mobile device. For instance, the promo video shows a woman scanning her project board with diverse images and text elements, only to later add a picture of a chair on top, right from her iPhone.
All of these functions are topped by seamless sharing, of course, which you can do with other subscribers to the Adobe Document Cloud sending them a link or inviting them to collaborate in your document. The app is free to download right now on the App Store and Google Play.
Source: Adobe
