Scanning PDFs is 1 of the most annoying things many of united states have to deal with in our personal and professional lives. Exist information technology mortgage documents, a machine loan, or other sensitive paperwork you need to preserve and share in a secure digital format, Adobe's ubiquitous PDF is a reality of dealing in docs in the mod world. Fortunately, you don't demand a hardware scanner or big, bulky multifunction printer to digitize your paper documents: all you demand is a smartphone, an app, and a couple of minutes. In this postal service, we'll intermission down what you need to do to go your docs and photos converted to PDF using an Android phone.

In that location are plenty of ways you tin generate PDFs in a compression, and probably a hundred apps that claim to do information technology, but nosotros'll be focusing on 3 adept ways from three specific and well-known apps to generate PDFs from real-world documents: Google Drive, Adobe Scan, and Microsoft Part Lens.

Since each has its own advantages, y'all can decide for yourself. In general, I'd recommend Bulldoze if you simply need to browse a document once or twice, since information technology'due south probably already installed on your phone and volition salve you time. However, our readers' favorite is Part Lens, and if you're dealing with scanning documents ofttimes, it's definitely your best choice.

Microsoft Role Lens

Of the 4 options here, Microsoft Office Lens is probably the best. Whether y'all're securely integrated into Microsoft's Function suite and services or not, information technology's pretty fast and piece of cake with a dead-simple interface and all the tools you probably need.

If you're scanning documents regularly from your phone, this is the app you should be using. Its perks include:

  • Integration into other Microsoft/Office services like OneNote, OneDrive, Word, and PowerPoint.
  • OCR via Word if yous use Microsoft Role.
  • Dead elementary, super-fast interface — you probably don't need my mitt-holding to utilize information technology (but it's here if you do).
  • Works with images/photos you already take.

Of all the apps on this listing, information technology'south the easiest to use:

Left: Firing up the app for the starting time time. Center: Viewfinder. Right: Selecting images from the camera roll.

Merely download the app, fire it up, grant it the required permissions, and you're off. Apart from an interstitial screen that you lot'll run across the very offset time you launch it (above left), y'all'll always be dumped straight to the viewfinder (higher up eye), as with Adobe's app.

The viewfinder has all the tools you lot need immediately accessible with just a few taps. Along the bottom of the viewfinder, below the shutter, are dissimilar modes you can switch between based on what you're scanning. Yous'll probably just use the default "document" mode, just you can quickly switch to scanning business cards, photos, and whiteboards as well, each of which triggers its own preset modes. Above the shutter is your camera roll, offering easy access to images you lot've already captured with your camera app — simply tap the images you'd like to add together to a document and so tap the orange pointer that appears to the right of the shutter button (higher up correct). Y'all can also tap the photo/gallery icon to become to a file picker if yous need to manually navigate to images outside the camera scroll.

When yous've got the document lined up in the viewfinder, an orange-ruddy rectangle indicates that it has a solid lock on its perspective and dimensions (which it can automatically crop and correct for). Only note that if y'all take photos on a grid-like background like you lot encounter pictured above, it might bug out a scrap with that automated cropping. There is a transmission ingather tool if that happens, though, and only very specific circumstances similar that triggered any misbehavior for me.

Tweaking images before y'all turn them into a document is very easy.

When you've captured a page for your document, the workflow to tweak it is uncomplicated. If you need to add some other folio to your document, tap the "Add New" push button, and y'all are taken back to the viewfinder to add another image — repeat that process as necessary with each folio of the document.

When multiple images are loaded in, you lot can swipe between pages by scrolling left and correct. In that location are filters if y'all adopt to convert your documents to black and white, etc., easily accessible with a quick swipe upwardly.

Forth the peak of the screen, you have about of the other, less frequently used options. You tin can delete images in the current certificate, change their crop, rotate images, change their document type (which adjusts pre-set filters), make a text overlay, or depict on the document. With compression-to-zoom working, yous can even add a signature or comment, if you need to.

Simple export procedure.

When you're done, tap "Done," and you get options for how to save your certificate. If you salvage it to your Android phone's gallery, that saves it as a JPEG prototype, but there are options to save a PDF file to your phone's storage equally well. You can besides transport the prototype to OneDrive, PowerPoint, or OneNote, and documents can be imported to Microsoft Word for OCR if you prefer to catechumen it into text.

When the document has been saved in a specific format, yous're dumped to a list of files y'all've created in the app, from there y'all can share or delete them via the three-dot menu on each. If I had to come upward with ane complaint about this app, information technology's that a share option could be integrated into the export screen earlier this one, but that'south a very minor business organization.

We accept two other, different ways of to create a PDF on your Android-powered telephone listed beneath. Bulldoze is likely the almost convenient choice for users in a pinch, and Adobe Scan is a expert tool if you lot live in the Acrobat ecosystem, but if y'all scan documents regularly, we nevertheless call back you owe it to yourself to try Microsoft Role Lens, it's hands the best document scanning solution nosotros've used.

Google Drive

The reasons to apply Google Bulldoze for your PDF needs are:

  • Information technology'south simple and easy.
  • You probably don't demand to install anything, almost phones come with information technology.
  • It syncs PDFs that it creates to Google Drive, a boon to Thousand Suite-based productivity and cloud storage.
  • If you don't need a local PDF — information technology can only salvage to Google Drive.

Creating PDFs in Google Drive on Android is elementary:

Left: The floating action button opens a bill of fare (correct) which includes the "Scan" choice for creating PDFs.

Simply open the app, tap the "+" floating action button in the corner, and in the resulting menu, select "scan."

Line upward, review, and tweak the photos y'all take for PDFs in Drive.

Line upwardly the document in the viewfinder, trying to make sure all iv corners are visible and that your view is mostly flat, and have the photo. (Holding the document with your hands while scanning is possible, but you'll need to exist careful.) After a bit of processing, Bulldoze then gives you lot the choice to review and accept or reject the photo before importing it into the PDF. Tap the big checkmark when you lot think the photo is good enough, and the app volition correct for some distortion and import the certificate in blackness and white (by default) to the PDF.

Drive tin can automatically correct for perspective, as well, so y'all don't demand to worry besides much if you lot can't snag the perfect shot, it will stretch and tweak things to compensate all on its own, though some content might end upward a bit off-kilter.

More options are nested in other menus.

From this screen you lot can add more pages to the current document ("+" icon), re-capture any page that has already been added (the reload/redo icon), alter the crop/distortion correction (crop icon in the top right corner), modify color settings (palette icon in the top correct corner), and delete, rotate, or rename the scan (all through the overflow three-dot carte du jour height right). Further options in the nested settings menu allow you to modify paper size, orientation, and image quality, though the defaults should exist fine for most of the states.

Once you're happy with the results, only tap the checkmark in the bottom right. Drive will ask you where to salve it in Google Drive and what to name it. Afterward you tap "Relieve" in the bottom right corner, it should exist there. Congrats, you've but made a PDF with your phone.

Google Drive tin exercise OCR, only information technology's a divide role.

You can as well get PDFs captured in this way to generate into text documents via OCR, merely it'south a multi-pace process. You'll demand to either open the PDF again later in Google Docs as a certificate or toggle a setting in Google Drive to modify how uploaded documents are handled ("Catechumen uploaded files to Google Docs editor format" in Settings -> Full general from the desktop site). Google'south OCR is pretty skilful with text, only strange formatting or unusual languages, symbols, or graphics can sometimes confuse information technology, so plan to review it later for errors.

Adobe Scan

If y'all demand a different set of features than what Google Drive's app can provide, and yous're willing to requite upwardly the deeper integration with G Suite's services, Adobe Browse may be more your mode. Its advantages include:

  • OCR (optical character recognition), which turns scanned documents into searchable, copyable text.
  • Works with images/photos you already accept.
  • Automobile-capture streamlines the photograph-taking process.
  • Works with the Adobe Acrobat app for built-in signing and filling out forms.

The procedure for Adobe Scan isn't much more complicated than it is on Drive, but I would say it is a little less user-friendly.

Adobe Browse can capture photos automatically and do perspective correction, also.

When you open up the app (and grant it the permissions it requires to function), you'll be presented directly to a camera viewfinder. Scrolling left or right through the carousel at the lesser allows you to select betwixt types of documents. The Aperture icon next to the shutter button controls Auto-Capture, which allows Adobe Scan to take photos of documents automatically once they're in frame, and I'd encourage you to have information technology on since information technology can relieve some time. Either way, you tin can still capture documents manually with the shutter button.

Adobe Browse isn't quite as proficient at picking upwardly the edges of documents for perspective correction in my feel, but it offers the gamble to correct the crop for each item equally information technology is scanned (past default, after enough scans information technology volition ask if you'd like to disable that).

The UI isn't quite every bit articulate equally Drive when it comes to advancing steps. The gallery icon is how y'all motility forward in one case y'all've taken all your photos.

Once yous take captured all of the documents you want to exist included in a given PDF, tap the gallery icon to the bottom right and it takes y'all to a screen where y'all can review the contents.

Adobe Scan can make PDFs from images you've already taken or downloaded.

(If yous'd adopt to make a PDF from images that were previously taken, the icon to the bottom left on the capture screen which looks like a stack of photos allows y'all to import them into the app to generate a document from.)

Options for tweaking PDFs are ameliorate labeled in Adobe Scan.

From the review screen, you can rename the PDF (text/pencil icon pinnacle heart), or use the navigation bar at the lesser to do things similar add more pages, reorder items, change the crop, rotate images, select color settings, or delete pages.

When you accept the PDF and its contents in a place that you similar information technology, tapping "Save PDF" in the summit left corner saves it locally, dumping y'all to the default "contempo" list of documents in Adobe Browse.

Several ways to open up and share PDFs.

From hither you can share existing documents, open up them in Acrobat, and fill them out/sign them via the Adobe Acrobat app. After a brusque flake of processing, the files listed here besides include OCR text. If you lot need to get them off of your device (which is probably the whole betoken of generating a PDF), you can share the files via that aptly-named "share" button. Options include shooting off a link to the file stored on Adobe's Document Cloud, sending the file via Email, or you can pass the file to some other app via an intent with "Share a copy."

One word of warning: I have run into issues with non-link, standalone PDF files generated by Adobe Scan. Information technology'southward clear that Adobe tries to push users into sharing PDFs via links over services it tin can charge for rather than the files directly (there's no pick to just save/export the PDF as a file to a specific location, for case). Yet, some of the files information technology has generated for me have had issues and couldn't be opened, though the online links created at the same time worked fine. YMMV, in my feel, Drive does a better chore handling PDFs as actual files.

Stack

From the Google Area 120 squad, Stack is a worthy mention on our list since it's then easy to use and has diverse unique features to heighten your user experience. With the Google proper noun attached to it, yous pretty much already await information technology to accept something interesting to offer. Some notable features of Stack include:

  • Increased security by locking the app with your biometrics, such equally a fingerprint or facial browse.
  • A built-in online fill-in feature to keep your documents rubber at all times.
  • Instantly salve a copy of your newly scanned documents from the app to Google Drive as a secondary online backup.
  • A one-tap batch export selection to speedily save all your previously scanned documents to Google Drive.
  • Automatically import photos of documents from your camera binder direct into the app.
  • Keep your documents keen and organized past categories, including custom ones if needed.

The Area 120 team is Google'due south in-house coiffure that works on experimental projects and ideas. Stack may not be around forever as a standalone app, but information technology's an excellent choice for our listing at this fourth dimension. The features from Stack could possibly merge with some other mainline Google app or service in the future, such as Google Bulldoze.

One time you download the app and open up it, select the Google account you lot wish to use and printing the "Continue" button. Grant the media permission, then accept or deny the "automatically add together new documents" option. Swipe through the few intro pages, then hit "Done." Striking the plus icon at the bottom, and get to "Photographic camera" to scan a document. Grant the photographic camera permission, marshal the document in the viewfinder every bit needed, then press the "Scan" button to take the photo.

Y'all tin can likewise utilize the "PDF" option to import an already existing PDF document for safekeeping purposes. Likewise, the "Gallery" option turns your previously taken photo documents into PDFs.

After capturing an image of the document, you can adjust the color or ingather ratio as needed. Stack is unremarkably pretty good at edge detection for newspaper documents, and then you may not have to change the ratio size much or fifty-fifty at all. When it comes to adjusting the color, you might consider brightening up a darker certificate to make information technology more pleasing to the eye.

Once the color and crop ratio are both to your liking, press "Save" to movement on to the next role. You tin name the document to any you want, then add it to a category (Stacks) of your choosing to continue things organized. Tap one of the icons to identify it into a specific "Stack" or printing "View all," and then "Create" to brand your own. Once yous're all set here, hitting the "Done" button to finalize your changes.

You lot tin can accept or deny the "save PDF copy" setting for Google Drive if you want, so hit "Go on." You should too see something about your biometrics on the main screen, then tap "Plow on lock" to secure your scanned documents right abroad.

If you tap your profile icon in the upper correct then become to "Settings," yous'll find the rest of the options you tin enable or disable at any fourth dimension. You tin consign all your scanned documents to Google Drive with one tap or even delete all of them from your account instantly if needed. Stack overall has plenty of features and is pretty straightforward in terms of usability. Information technology'southward a highly recommended app and a well-deserved spot on our list.

As long equally you're connected to a Wi-Fi network, the new documents you lot browse should automatically back up to your Google account. You lot can likewise enable the "Back up using mobile information" choice to save your Stack documents in the cloud while on the go.

Whatever you cull, you've got options — more than nosotros fifty-fifty listed here. So the next time you lot think you'll take to notice a scanner to put together a PDF, think that the phone in your pocket is perfectly capable of handling it.

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Ryne Hager (2975 Articles Published)

Ostensibly a senior editor, in reality just some verbose dude who digs on tech, loves Android, and hates anticompetitive practices. His only regret is that he didn't buy a Nokia N9 in 2012. Email tips or corrections to ryne at androidpolice dot com.

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