Scan documents to PDF with the camera

How to scan to PDF

1. Press "Open the camera" (your browser asks for permission to use it) and "Take this page" for each page, or "Choose pictures" if you already have them.
2. Tap a page you took, drag the four green dots to the corners of the paper, and pick colour document, grey or black and white. Turn the page if it is sideways.
3. Put the pages in order with ← → and press "Make the PDF".

Your files stay on your device

The browser asks to use the camera only when you press "Open the camera". The camera picture is shown and worked on in this page on your device: it is not uploaded or saved anywhere, and the camera is switched off when you close it or leave the page. Nothing is kept in the browser: close the page and it is all gone.

Good to know

• When you press "Take this page" the picture just taken stays on the screen for half a second, with a light flash and a short shutter click (made in this page; no sound file is loaded), and phones that can buzz give a short buzz. The button cannot be pressed again meanwhile, and the camera comes back by itself. Switch the sound off with the "Shutter sound" button (if your device is set to reduce motion there is no flash and the edge of the view changes colour instead). Beside the button you see a small picture of the last page, the number of pages, "Delete last" and "Done: go to cropping".
• Photograph the paper on a surface of a different colour, in even light with no shadow of your hand, and the paper is easier to tell from the table. Then drag the corners to match.
• "Black and white" gives the sharpest text for printed documents but is no good for photos or pale signatures. "Colour document" keeps the colour of the ink.
• The corners of the paper are not found for you: drag them yourself (they start 5% in from the edges). "Whole picture" uses the entire picture without straightening.
• To be able to search the text in the file, run this PDF through OCR afterwards.
• Pictures are scaled so the longest side is at most 3000 pixels before they are worked on, and a finished page at most 2400 pixels (about A4 at 200 dpi), to keep phone memory in check.
• If the camera cannot be opened (not allowed, or some in-app browsers do not support it), use "Take with the camera app" or "Choose pictures" instead.

Report a problem or suggest an idea

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