Scanning
Document scanner
Use your phone camera: find the edges, straighten, save as PDF.
Point the camera at the page. The scanner finds the page and takes the shot by itself once the picture is steady. Then just turn the page.
Photograph a page
Put the page on a dark, plain surface so the scanner finds the edges reliably. Photos from your gallery work too.
Or paste with Ctrl + V
Drag the four dots onto the corners of the page.
Change the order: drag a page (on a phone, press and hold first). The slider icon sets brightness, contrast and look for a single page.
Getting a good scan
- In the scanner, hold the phone steady over the page. Once the yellow outline sits still and fills up, the shot is taken. Then put the next page down: the scanner waits until something changes.
- The scanner notices shaky shots and simply takes them again.
- The scanner tells you what is missing: too dark, a reflection, an edge cut off, too slanted. The level in the middle shows when the phone lies flat above the page.
- Light from above or from a window. Shadows are fine, “Enhanced” removes them. A dark surface helps with finding the edges.
- In poor light, use the torch at the top right (if your phone lets the browser use it).
ID cards, cards and receipts
With “ID card, card”, front and back go one above the other on an A4 page at their real size, the way offices and landlords often want a copy. With “Receipts”, several receipts sit side by side on one page, handy for expense claims and tax returns.
Sharper in low light
With every shot, the live camera takes three pictures in quick succession, lines them up exactly and combines them. Noise drops noticeably, and a moving reflection disappears. If the pictures moved too much in between, Kladde keeps the first one.
Searchable
With “Searchable PDF”, the scanner reads the text of every page right after the shot, on your device (German and English). It lies invisibly exactly over the writing: in the PDF you can search, select and copy text. The file is named after the first page’s title. To correct the text or pull out tables, use “Continue to text recognition”.
Reflections
Glossy paper reflects the lamp. Where the photo under the reflection is pure white, no writing is left in it: then the scanner suggests a second photo. Hold the phone at a slightly different angle and take the same page again (the live camera does this by itself; the page’s “Remove a reflection” button also takes a photo from your gallery). The reflection moves with the camera; the scanner lays both photos on top of each other to the pixel and takes every spot from the photo in which it doesn’t reflect.
Curled sheets, crooked print, upside down
If a sheet doesn’t lie flat (fresh from a ring binder, folded, a corner lifting), its edges bend in the photo. The scanner measures that bend along all four edges, works out how the paper curves and where the camera was, and flattens the page so lines are straight again and letters keep their width. It also turns pages photographed sideways or upside down, and straightens text that was printed crooked.
Pages photographed at an angle keep their real proportions: the scanner works out the perspective instead of squashing the page, and recognises A4 (A5 too) and US Letter along the way.