When you’re looking to enhance or expand your About Page, Mapping the Legacy entries, Highlights, and Look/Listen, you might have some images and documents you’d like to include. However, these materials might not be digitized.
There are many methods to scan. If scanning on a scanner or printer with scanning abilities is not a possibility, you may use other electronic methods on your phone or tablet. To transfer from your phone or tablet, we’ll be using Google Drive. Google Drive is available on both android and Apple products and is a free storage software that comes with your Gmail account. The best part of Google Drive? You can download directly from Google Drive to your Media Library!
Before you get started, remember:
- Anything you scan and therefore embed onto your site will require you to clear the rights. Please review our Guide to Clearing Rights, which explains your legal responsibilities as a contributor to the PAL site.
- Instead of scanning, if you can find the same material on a reputable site and can link, you will not need to clear the rights.
Please Note: You can take pictures of pictures/documents with your phone or tablet. However, if using your phone or tablet, scanning is your best option since the digital file might be too large to easily work with.
Click the heading below for more on the topic.
Scanning Programs For Your Phone or Tablet
If you do not have access to a scanner, there are many new phone and/or tablet applications that can assist in digitizing your documents. These Scanning Apps will save your scan as an IMAGE (jpeg) or DOCUMENT (pdf) in both full color and black and white.
In addition, many documents can automatically sync to Google Drive so that your files will be safe and easy to access from any computer.
To learn how to download apps to your device, please see links below:
- How to download an app on an Android device
- How to download an app on an Apple device
A few options on the iTunes and Android Stores, depending on your device (prices updated 2/20/2020)
Adobe Scan
Delivers great quality scans and allows you to convert, edit, share, and sign documents. You can also crop, rotate, color, and “cleanup” your scans.
Cost: Free
Available for Apple or Android Products? Both
Notes
All Apple produces have a free app called Notes that is automatically installed on your Apple products. Scanned images can be uploaded to other apps (such as Google Drive), emailed, or saved on your device.
Please note: As of Fall 2021, scans from Notes can only be exported as .pdfs and not .jpegs or .png. They will need to be converted to be used as proper photos. Find a tutorial here.
Cost: Free
Available for Apple or Android Products? Apple
Office Lens
The simplest document scanning app there is. It is so easy that all you have to do is position your device above the document – as soon as it detects the corners of what you’re scanning just press the shutter button (the circle like taking a picture). Office Lens has one of the best document edge detections that we’ve seen in document scanner apps, meaning it’s easy to be sure the entire document is scanned – you can adjust corners to fit perfectly if needed, but it’s rare to need to. The app will also give you a choice of whether you’re scanning a business card, photo, document, or taking a photo from a whiteboard. Once you’re finished scanning, you can save the scans as JPEGS in your camera roll or as PDFs to documents.
Cost: Free
Available for Apple or Android Products? Both
Evernote
Evernote has a free app that you can download to your phone or tablet to scan. Then you can open up Evernote.com on your computer to access the file and save it directly to your computer. Evernote is a good option if you’re working with a Fellow or an assistant. You both can share an account so you can both work in tandem of scanning and uploading images and documents.
Cost: Free
Available for Apple or Android Products? Both
Turboscan
Features a very easy to use interface, and it adds SURESCAN which takes three consecutive scans to make sure you have the sharpest image possible. It boasts document edge detection and perspective correction just like most premium scanner apps. Can sync to iCloud, Dropbox, and Google Drive.
Cost: $5.99
Available for Apple or Android Products? Both
Scanner Pro
Transforms your iPhone or iPad into a portable scanner. Scanned documents can be emailed, exported to Photos, uploaded to online services (supports Dropbox, Google Drive, iCloud Drive, Evernote, Box, OneDrive and OneNote), can simply be saved on your device, or printed/faced. Use Text Recognition (OCR) to copy and share text from searchable PDF documents.
Cost: $3.99
Available for Apple or Android Products? Apple