8 Best Document and Photo Scanner apps for Android and iOS

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Smartphone cameras are getting better every year and I am sure you have already used them as photo or document scanners. You will often find yourself in a situation where you’d have to scan and share an important document over your phone. Or perhaps you are interested in maintaining a digital repository of your old photo album or often take picture notes. (हिंदी में पढ़े)

However, the process could be a lot simpler and effective if you’d use an app specifically designed for the purpose. You can avoid issues like glare and uneven exposure, especially in indoor lighting.

Difference between Photo Scanning and Document Scanning apps:

Such scanning apps are broadly classified as photo and document scanners. Document scanning apps aggressively enhance the contrast and saturation to make the text more readable and mostly allow you to save documents as PDFs. On the other hand, the Photo scanning apps apply a more balanced color enhancement and allow you to save scans as images and to club them in an album.

Most apps, however, can do both – document and image scanning. Even dedicated document scanning apps like Adobe Scan have ‘Original Picture’ mode that can be used for photo scanning.

So let’s get started with some of the best document and Photo Scanner apps that you can use on Android and iPhones.

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1. Google Photo Scan

Google Photo Scan is certainly one of the best photo scanners around. Just place the object you need to scan in the given frame, move your camera to the 4 corners and you are done. The app uses all corner images to enhance the main image and, more often than not, the result is glare-free scan even when you use the flashlight.

You don’t even need to download a separate app. The functionality is already there in Google Photos App that comes pre-installed on most Android phones

Key Features:

  • Accessible via Google photos, you don’t need a separate app.
  • The app is expert at eliminating glare in images. Flash is on in the process, which makes it suitable for use in indoor lighting.

Download on Android & iOS

2. Office Lens

Office Lens is a photo scanner app from Microsoft. The app has preset for scanning photos, document, business card and whiteboard. You can either shoot images through the app or import them from the gallery. Unlike other apps in this list, office lens lets you decide the resolution of your scan.

Office lens allows you to add stickers, edit images, apply filters, add blur, and even doodle over scanned documents and images. You can directly upload them to your OneDrive or to the Microsoft Office suite of apps.

Key Features:

  • Its biggest strength is the option to toggle scan resolution. The final scan resolution is also higher than most other apps on this list including Google’s Photo Scan.
  • The app has separate Photo, Document, and business card presets. Color enhancement and cropping algorithms are pretty good.

Download for Android and iOS

3. Adobe Scan

Adobe Scan more of a document scanner than a photo scanner that comes from a renowned brand.  Yup, the name Adobe associated with it sounds reason enough to try it. The app can automatically detect a document in the viewfinder, or you could press the shutter manually.


The clicked image is that cleaned and corrected to resemble a scanned document. You can also stick to the ‘original photo look’ if that’s what you’d rather prefer (or if you are scanning photos). The app has a few editing options and can save multiple scans as a single PDF file conveniently.

Key Features:

  • Very efficient at scanning documents and saving them as PDFs.
  • Multipage PDFs supported.

Download for Android and iOS

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4. Photomyne

Photomyne has been designed keeping photo scanning in mind. You can click and organize your images in a separate album and share them with your friends and family.

You can use the app to scan multiple images and is very deft at recognizing image edges and is intelligent enough to automatically rotate them when required. The app is free for the first 7 days but requires a monthly subscription thereafter.

Key Features:

  • The app lets you organize photos in neat albums.
  • The app is very good at detecting image edges and cropping.

Download for Android and iOS

5. Cam scanner

Cam scanner is one of the most popular image scanning apps that you can use for both document and photos. The App can automatically crop image and document edges and has a number of post-processing filters that you can use.

Other features include options to click and import images from the inbuilt camera app, OCR tool, and option to change contrast and saturation.

Key Features:

  • Multipage PDF support.
  • Cloud upload and sharing.
  • Works seamlessly and has everything most people need.

Download for Android and iOS

6. Doc Scanner

Doc Scanner is what you could use if you are looking for a wider set of editing options. The app also integrates a QR code generator, QR code reader, and OCR tool.

Doc Scanner allows you to import images from the gallery, which is a good thing as the default camera app is generally better than in App camera software. You can then edit the image to give it a scanned look and feel. The app allows you to add filters, watermarks, and stickers. You can save the end result as PDF or image to your gallery or on the cloud (Google Drive and Dropbox).

Key features:

  • The app is loaded with features. The free version allows you access tools like QR scanning, automatic cropping, OCR and more.
  • Scan quality enhancement works great.

Download for Android

Also Read: 16 best go launcher themes for 2018

7. Scanbot

Scanbot is an option you can consider if you need to scan documents or photos very frequently. The app has a free version too, but most of the features are reserved for the paid version (one-time fee).

The best part about Scanbot is its interface and efficient scan algorithms. You can turn auto upload on and access all scanned documents directly on your PC or other devices.

Key Feature:

  • The app gives onscreen advice and assistance while capturing images and that makes a difference.
  • Plenty of useful editing options.

Download for Android and iOS

8. Unfade Photo Scanner

From the same developer as Scan bot, Unfade or Photo Scanner is a great app for Photo scanning but it is exclusive to iOS as of now. The app revives the colors of scanned photographs, can neatly stack them in folders and albums.

You can also sync scanned images to your iCloud or share them directly with friends and family.

Key feature:

  • Enhances colors in old faded photographs.
  • Quick and efficient at scanning and cropping images.

Download for iOS

Best document and photo scanner apps for Android and iOS

These are some of the best available options for ios and Android users. If you find yourself scanning documents very often, you can consider paid apps but for everyone else, free apps like Google Photo Scan should work just fine. If you scan documents for taking notes, most popular note-taking apps like Evernote, Dropbox, etc. have their own document scanners as well.

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Deepak SinghDeepak Singh
Deepak has more than 8 years of experience in covering technology for several eminent publications in India. He currently leads an enthusiastic team of young writers at Smartprix and tries to uphold the highest quality standards.

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7 Comments
User
Remove Object
Anonymous
2 years ago

We are added much functionality in this Remove object from photo and Remove BG from photo app like remover, clone stamp, background eraser, quick remover, transparent background and cloth remover.

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Suchi Abram
Anonymous
4 years ago

If you are able to scan from the program, restart your computer. Then turn the printer off and back on to see if you will be able to scan from the operator panel. If you have already tried to power off the printer and restart it, or even reinstall the driver, but still failed to scan again, you can try this method. For More: First run a malware scan and removal tool, as it is highly possible that something malicious may have caused corruptions with your printer software or within Windows file system.

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Anonymous
4 years ago

The article very well defines the document and photo scanner apps available in the market. With smartphones getting better and more lens driven, we are sure to have more apps with added benefits in the years to come

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Anonymous
4 years ago

Android play store & apple store has tons of different scanning apps for mobile devices. Some are paid, some are free, some are free partially means using some premium additional settings will need money.

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facebbok
Anonymous
4 years ago

The difference between a photo scanner and a document scanner is clearly explained…

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Anonymous
5 years ago

I read your blog and it’s very informative information you share with us, But it’s really helped me. In your blog, I learn there are some documents and photo scanner for android and ISO. I suggest you gather more information and share with us. Keep up the good work and keep posting.

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Moses Brodin
Anonymous
5 years ago

Thank you so much. I was going nuts. I’ve had my Laptop for a few years now and never had a need to use the camera until now so I didn’t bother with it. You saved me a headache. Thanks again. Ragerds:Moses Brodin

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