Scan a document with my camera

When you need this

You need a clean copy of a document and the nearest scanner is a shop that charges per page and keeps a copy on its computer. A photograph of the page works, but it comes out tilted, grey, shadowed and far too large to upload. This turns the photograph into something that looks scanned.

How to use it

1. Put the document on a flat surface in good light. Daylight near a window beats a ceiling bulb, which puts your own shadow on the page.
2. Photograph it from directly above, getting all four corners in the frame. It does not need to be square — that is the part this fixes.
3. Drag the four corners to the edges of the paper.
4. Save. The page is flattened, squared up and cleaned so the writing stands out from the paper.

What it does and does not do

• It corrects the angle properly. The page is reshaped as if photographed flat on, not simply cropped, so a photo taken from the side still comes out rectangular.
• It makes the paper white and the ink dark, judging each part of the page separately so a shadow across one corner does not turn into a grey band.
• The files are small. Far smaller than a raw photograph, which is usually the difference between a portal accepting the upload and refusing it.
• It does not read the words. The result is a picture of the page. You cannot search it or copy text out of it, and it cannot be converted to Word.

If something goes wrong

• The writing is patchy or broken up. Usually too little light, or pencil rather than pen. Try again by a window.
• The corners will not sit on the paper. Retake the photograph with a little space around the document so all four corners are inside the frame.
• Several pages. Scan them one at a time, then join them with put my PDFs into one file.
• You need the text, not a picture. This tool cannot give you that. Ask the sender for the original file.