Price/Platform: $2.99 (iOS)
Review Version: 2.1
Developer Website: https://smilesoftware.com/pdfpen-scan
Features: PDFPen Scan+ is a scanning app with OCR capabilities. The app combines a user friendly interface, strong import and export options with quick and easy OCR. While it does not have as robust OCR capabilities as some of it’s competitors, it has one of the nicest interfaces and export options around!
To get started with the app, you can choose to create your document from three different sources (located on button bar of the main screen), import from another app or service, import from a photo album or use your device’s camera. If you use your device’s camera, you can take advantage of the app’s touch-free scanning! Just point your camera at the item(s) you want, and the app will automatically capture it. You will see on-screen prompts to help make sure you get a good scan, and once you have captured everything you need, just press the button in the left hand corner.
After you have captured or imported all of the content you want, your items will appear grouped together in the document view. This is where you can edit the items (crop, rotate, adjust coloring), apply the OCR, and add additional pages. When you apply the OCR for the first time, it will show you in real time as it processes each document. You will know that it has recognized text if it is highlighted yellow. Once it has performed the OCR, it will show the OCRed text over a grayed out original scan and you can also choose to copy the text to your clipboard.
Now that your happy with all of your pages, you can then go to the share button and export your document as a text searchable PDF. The app supports a variety of options off the bat including iCloud Drive, Dropbox, Evernote, Google Drive and Open in other apps. You can also enable auto-export of document to iCloud or Dropbox and enable iCloud sync, in the setting menu. While in settings you can also adjust your preference for naming new documents instead of using the default untitled scheme.
Summary: PDFpen Scan+ is an easy to use scanning and OCR app that offers touch-free scanning and easy export options.
Pro:
- Easy to use with a clean interface
- The touch-free scanning is quick and responsive
- Adding more pages to documents is very easy
Con:
- OCR accuracy is so-so even on high quality scans
- Adjusting the cropping on scans can be confusing and slightly difficult
How I use it: I currently do not use this app as my primary scanning and OCR app, as I find that Prizmo has a slightly more accurate OCR engine. However, the app’s fast scanning feature is quite good and I really wish other apps would follow their easy menu view approach for importing and exporting documents.
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