I once needed to click a picture of one of my important documents and thought that my Smartphone can do it the best but I was badly mistaken. I thought that I will click the picture with my Smartphone and then will convert it into a Word document or PDF later but friends the angle was totally out. It is not actually possible to take a perfectly aligned photo of a document even with a Smartphone.
If we want a perfectly aligned picture of a document we need to scan it, this is what thought and then planned to make my own scanner.
Hey! I am not kidding!
I actually made my own document scanner for my Smartphone using a cardboard. I know it won’t work as an actual scanner but it helped me greatly to get a scanner quality picture of my document with my own Smartphone.
Let me tell you how I did that.
To make a document scanner you need
White cardboard of dimension 420X 297mm that it popularly termed as A3 size, hard pencil and a Craft knife.
Steps to make your own cardboard scanner
1. Cut the A3 cardboard sheet in half. This will give you two A4 sheets.
2. Now cut one of those A4 sheets into 4 same sized strips. Remember that each strip should be 297 mm long and 52.5mm wide. These strips would work as the legs of the scanner.
3. Now cut a small tab into one end of each strip. Let it be about 5mm deep tab.
4. Now take the remaining A4 sheet and make the matching L-Shaped slot on its each corner. These slots should be around 7 mm so that your 5mm tab of legs fits well into it.
5. Now measure and check the center of the remaining A4 sheet and cut a hole there. This hole should be of exactly same size of your Smartphone camera slot.
6. Now attach the four legs to the A4 sheet and give it a look of a table.
Your document scanner is ready to use now. You do not need any glue to affix the legs as they get slotted easily in the four L shaped cuts on the edges of A4 sheet.
How to use the cardboard document scanner
7. Keep the document scanner on a flat surface, like floor or a table. Floor is a better option.
8. Place the document in the area between its legs. Keep it face up.
9. Launch the camera app in your Smartphone and place it on the upper portion of the scanner box adjusting its camera accordingly. You can also use zoom feature of your camera if you need a close-up of document.
10. When it is all-set, start clicking.
You can then send these scanned pictures through email or also can send them to a local printer (wireless). Converting it into a PDF file is quite easy using OCR.
Conclusion: To be honest the Smartphone is capable enough to capture an excellent quality and high-resolution picture but the only problem is gravitational stability. This cardboard scanner provides a stable platform and thus perfectly aligned picture.
you can also upload via the Google drive app, but to OCR in Google docs straight from your phone you’ve got to use the desktop version of docs in chrome or android browser.