DocScanner vs JotNot Scanner
With the improved camera on the iPhone 3GS comes the ability to take much more detailed and close up pictures. Taking advantage of the improved resolution and close up features, several iPhone scanner applications hit the AppStore and I swapped and chopped between them through their various releases. I’ve been using DocScanner for the past few months but wanted to compare it to the latest JotNot Scanner release (v2.1).
Functionally DocScanner (v3.01) and JotNot Scanner (v2.1) are quite similar. Both will allow you to take photos from your iPhone or import from your photo library. You can create multi-page PDF’s and email your results as PNG, JPG or PDF. Both offer wi-fi access to your documents and uploading to WebDAV servers, although JotNot does also usefully allow you to upload to Google Docs. One other neat trick offered by JotNot Scanner is the ability to re-order the pages of your documents.
These two are similar enough at this level, but at the end of the day for me the choice of which app to keep and which to delete comes down to one thing - image quality.
The same basic rules apply to taking pictures for scanning with both applications:
- Light your document as much as possible
- Nearly fill the screen with your document leaving a small border around the edges
- Place your document on a dark background (assuming it is a light coloured document)
- Hold your iPhone as steady as possible when taking the picture
Following these basic rules usually gets you a good starting picture, after which it is down to the application to work its magic. Both do a good job of detecting the edges assuming there is plenty of contrast between your docuemnt and the background. Both are quick to scan, taking just a few seconds, but I have found the results to be quite different. Now there are options to optimise the scanning process or apply different settings so you might be able to vary the results this way, but using the default settings I have consistantly found DocScanner to create the sharper and better scans.
Below are two example scans taken under the same conditions. The first is the DocScanner image which has applied more aggressive whitening which washes out the image but makes the text far more legible. The second, JotNot Scanner, image just appears to be slightly blurred and harder to read.
You can make your own mind up and obviously bear in mind that different documents and lighting conditions could significantly alter the outcome, but for me the consistant clarity of scans from DocScanner means that it will keep its place on my iPhone. Goodbye JotNot Scanner…
DocScanner is available from the AppStore for £5.49 and JotNot Scanner is available from the AppStore for £2.99
