Daily App: Quick PDF Scanner Gets It Straight

Among the major drawbacks of using a smartphone or tablet for document capture is the loss of precise perspective and the need to manually crop. Solving both of those problems is PDF Quick Scanner for Android, a free app from Mobile Systems that's the best we've seen of its kind here in the CRN Test Center. That's mostly thanks to a recent update that adds perspective cropping, which automatically keystone-corrects scanned images, cropping out unwanted areas in geometric shapes that are not limited to rectangular.

Compatible with Android 4.0.3 and later, the app employs a simple, intuitive interface with large buttons for import and capture functions. When scanning, dedicated buttons appear to superimpose a grid over the viewfinder and for toggling the flash. There's also a camera settings button with access to HDR, focus controls, picture size, JPEG quality, exposure compensation and color effects such as emboss, negative, sepia, solarize and others. The app also incorporates OCR, and displays a prompt immediately after a scan if the feature is disabled.

In the app's main screen, all documents are displayed by default, and tabs provide quick access to filters for recent and favorites. Tapping on a document brings up that document (or its multiple versions) in editing mode, with access to Crop, Merge, Share, Save, Print, Rename, Delete and other menu functions plus buttons dedicated to 90-degree rotation. Invoking the Crop feature automatically selects the relevant portions of the document and discards the remainder, saving a second version of the document. The original versions are retained until manually discarded.

Scans can be shared via email, Bluetooth or Wi-Fi Direct or exported and shared to Box, Drive, Dropbox, Evernote and OneDrive. The tool can import BMP, GIF, JPEG, PNG and WEBP images from the Android Gallery, Facebook, Google+, Picasa and external storage devices. It also supports Android's Backup and Restore feature, and if not connected displays a prompt to log into Google Drive. By default, the app backs up every time it's exited, placing a ZIP file in Drive's root directory.

Beware of imitations. There's a Quick PDF Scanner for iOS that does some of the same things, but it's not the same app -- far from it. If capturing and sharing documents as PDFs is the question, Quick PDF Scanner for Android is the answer. An ad-free version costs $4.99 per year.

PUBLISHED JAN. 7, 2015