Below you can find answers for most frequently asked question about SharpScan (iOS version).
If you don’t have it yet, you can get it for Free on App Store. Android version also available on Google Play Store.
We also highly recommend you to watch our video tutorials.
If you will not find an answer feel free to contact us.

We made SharpScan to be able to correct as much scanning problems as possible, but following the simple rules below you can be sure that you’ll get perfectly scanned documents:

  1. Good lighting is a key factor!
    • Make sure that document is well lit.
    • Avoid strong shadows as well as glares (especially with glossy documents).
    • Use the flash with matt originals.
  2. Document should be flat (not curved or folded).
  3. Background should be uniform and contrast to original to make sure that Smart Crop (auto cropping) will work well.
  4. Use Stabilization switched ON in SmarCamera Settings during shooting especially in low light conditions.
  5. Make sure that document fits camera viewfinder (window).
  6. Hold device parallel (as much as possible) and centered to original document.

After SharpScan installed on device he will ask permission to access Photos (to be able to load document from Photo library). If you do not grant access first time you still able to change this in future. To restore SharpScan access to Photo library please follow these simple steps:

  1. Open your device global Settings (grey gear icon on home screen).
  2. Go to Privacy - Photos.
  3. Find “SharpScan” in application list. Switch it on.

Now SharpScan will be able to access your Photos.

After SharpScan installed on device he will ask permission to access Camera (to be able to utilise device Camera).If you do not grant access first time you still able to change this in future.

To restore SharpScan access to device Camera please follow these simple steps:

  1. Open your device global “Settings” (grey gear icon on home screen).
  2. Go to Privacy - Camera section.
  3. Find SharpScan icon in the list. Switch it on.

Now SharpScan will be able to access your Camera.

If you found that almost all your document (and document preview in camera viewfinder) wrongly turned 90° usually this means that access to device Motion sensor was not provided. To grant access to device Motion Sensor please follow these simple steps:

  1. Open your device global Settings (grey gear icon on home screen).
  2. Scroll down the application list and find SharpScan. Tap on its icon.
  3. Check that all items are switched ON (Album, Camera, Mobile Data).
  4. Open Location section and make sure that it set to Always.
  5. Reboot your device and start SharpScan again.

By default, document sharing format set to PDF (as most supported over all known computer platforms and mobile devices). SharpScan also supports other document sharing formats — Images and Text.
If you’d like to change your document sharing format, please follow these simple steps:

  1. Open document you’d like to share.
  2. Tap on sharing icon SharpScan document sharing.
  3. On opened Sharing screen tap on Document Format (first item in list) and choose preferred document format from the list. Your choice will be remembered and used by default for the next sharing. You can always change it later.
  4. Share you document through your favorite service by tapping on it in the list.

There two main ways to rename document in SharpScan.

First (most simple)
  1. Open document you want to rename.
  2. Tap on its name on top toolbar.
  3. On opened dialogue edit existing or enter new name and tap on OK button.
Second.
  1. Open document you what to rename by tapping on its thumbnail.
  2. Tap on document property icon SharpScan document propety on bottom menu bar. Document Property screen will open. On this screen you can not only rename document but also change it paper size.
  3. Tap on document Name field. It should become editable. Enter an appropriate document name.
  4. Tap on Save. Document name will be changed.

First of all — feel free to change document color mode as much as you want. Since SharpScan edit all documents in nondestructive mode you can always revert to original image. You can change document color in two ways:

Manually.

  1. Open the page you want to reprocess (rescan).
  2. Tap on color profile icon on bottom tool-bar ( one of SharpScan BW color profile, SharpScan Grey color profile ,SharpScan Color color profile, SharpScan Original color profile )
  3. Tap color profile icon again and choose new color from list. Image will be reprocessed.
    For more information on color profiles please read “What color processing profile should I use” article (see below). Tap on OK.
    Used color profile will be set as new default and will be used on next scan (until you change it again).

In batch mode.

Please read about in “How to change several documents/pages at once” article (see below). You can watch our document manual adjustments video tutorial where color changing process well covered.

This is highly depending on your future documents usage. Anyway, feel free to experiments since you can always revert document to original state. Below our general recommendations about processing profiles usage.

  • B&W (Black and White). SharpScan BW color profile
    Use it when you care about document size and text only. It produces clear tiny black and white documents with favour to the text area and disregard images and photos. Could be useful when you need to send rather big documents over low quality connection (like cellular network). Also take into account that image will have lossless compression.

  • Gray. SharpScan Grey color profile
    Near the same as B&W but optimized for human eye readability. Using lossy Jpeg compression (level could be set in settings).

  • Color. SharpScan Color color profile
    Use Color processing profile when you care about document color information. Better fits for documents with color charts, photos, magazines etc. Using lossy ÏJpeg compression (level could be set in settings).

  • Original. SharpScan Original color profile Use it only if anything else fits your needs. Doesn’t process documents at all (only crop). Using lossy Jpeg compression (level could be set in settings)

Please watch our document manual adjustments video tutorial where color changing process well covered.

Smart Camera is aimed to provide full auto mode shooting and reduce inintentional shooting errors. But sometimes this leads to some inconvenience especially in bad lighting conditions. If you have problems complaining Smart Camera interactive demands border or simply in a rush you can:

  • Just ignore the messages and tap on camera button or document preview in camera viewfinder. In this case camera will take a shot not waiting when document will be found and handshaking sensor will be ignored.
  • If you completely don’t like new scanning method you can easily switch it off by tapping on radar icon SharpScan Smart Camera on (it will be grey out to SharpScan Smart Camera off) or adjust it more precisely in SharpScan SettingsSmart Camera section.

In SharpScan you can easily copy or move any page(pages) to any existing document. Just follow the steps below.

  1. First of all, make sure that you have a «destination» document where you want your pages to be copied (moved). If you don’t have it just create new one from Camera SharpScan scan document from Camera or Album SharpScan scan document from Album.
  2. Open document which contains page you want to copy.
  3. Tap on Select menu and select the page(s) you want to copy.
  4. Tap on Folder icon SharpScan copy pages or documents (bottom menu bar).
  5. Select desired action: Copy or Move.
  6. Select the «destination» document (from step 1) for your pages.
  7. Tap on Done. Pages will be copied or moved to selected document.

“Smart Crop” is our proprietary artificial intelligence technology allowing to automatically detect document boundaries and cut it out from background with high precision.
This means that in most cases you don’t need manually adjust document boundaries – this will be done in full auto.

If shooting conditions was not good, or in some cases when document or background have complicated content, “Smart Crop” function could offer to manually correct document boundaries. Follow our recommendations for perfect scanning (see above) to make sure that you’ll get best possible results in full auto mode.

We recommend using this option in low-lit conditions.
There are very few shooting problems we can’t (currently) correct. And one of them is defocusing. Usually it happens due to camera tremor during shooting and especially critical in low-lit conditions.
To mitigate this, we implement “stabilization” feature to our camera. It works very simple – camera waits until trembling will be reduced to appropriate level and only after that makes a shot.
To reduce camera tremor, try to hold hand still as much as possible or use any kind of support (stand or tripod).

Use this option with any processing preset (except Original) if original image contain strong shadows. In most cases it could help reveal a lot of additional information.
“Shadows” processing will work more effectively, if processed document was cropped accurately without any additional dark fragments from background.
Please avoid use this option on documents without strong shadows since it could lead to loose some details on dark areas.

New compression setting will be applied during document reprocessing (modification). To recompress document (not altering cropping and profile settings) do the following.

  1. Open desired page.
  2. Tap on color profile icon (could one of SharpScan BW color profile, SharpScan Grey color profile ,SharpScan Color color profile,SharpScan Original color profile ).
  3. Tap on Done button. New compression level will be applied, document size will be changed.

Do not be afraid to change compression level over and over again. Each time document will be compressed from original so there will be no compression errors accumulation. To recompress several pages or documents use batch processing.

When you have a lot of multipage documents scanned sometimes you need to process them in batch. Currently in batch mode you can: change color profile, rotate document clockwise or counterclockwise, redetect document boundaries. To process documents/pages in batch mode please follow the steps below.

  1. Select documents (or pages inside document) by tapping on Select button and taping on appropriate items. Use Select All icon (SharpScan select all) for quick selection of multiple items.
  2. Tap on Batch processor icon (SharpScan batch process).
  3. On Bach processor screen select options you want to change — e.g. Color profile, Rotation, Boundary redetection.
  4. Tap on OK. You’ll see the progress on documents (page) icons.

You can also watch our “batch processing video tutorial”.

Consider using Black and White processing profile SharpScan BW color profile.
In most cases it 10-20 times (depend in document content) smaller than Gray or Color.
If document colors are crucial use lowest acceptable Jpeg quality (in Setting menu, Export section).

If you need to share the “original” image (which comes from camera and not affected by SharpScan in any way) you can do it by following several simple steps.

  1. Open desired page.
  2. Tap on Crop icon.
  3. Tap on SharpScan expand document borders Select all icon. Image cropping boundaries will be extended to all visible area.
  4. Tap on Processing profile icon (could be one of SharpScan Original color profile SharpScan BW color profile SharpScan Grey color profile SharpScan Color color profile).
  5. Choose original image processing profile by tapping the SharpScan Original color profile Original icon.
  6. Tap on Done button.
  7. Tap on SharpScan share page(s) or document(s) Share icon. Choose Share as: Image.
  8. Tap on Done button. Original image will be shared.

For the sake of simplicity in Document property you can set up only the “Open Password”. In tis case the “Permissions password” will also be set. It equals to “open password” plus “js” (lower case). For example, if you set the open password to 123 your permission password will be the 123js .

“AutoUpload” feature allows you fully automatically upload your documents to your favorite cloud sharing service in background. To set up your documents to AutoUpload jus follow the steps below.

  1. Open SharpScan Settings by tapping on SharpScan Settings Gear icon on Documents screen.
  2. Tap on Upload Accounts.
  3. Tap on your favorite cloud service and enter an appropriate credentials (login and password).
  4. Tap on AutoUpload option.
  5. Switch AutoUpload ON for chosen cloud service.
  6. By default, all uploads will go to the root folder od selected service. You can change it by tapping on service name below the list. In opened screen browse to desired folder (or crate new one) and tap on Select.
  7. Now all you new and changed documents will be automatically upload to the selected folder of your favorite cloud service.

Important notes.

  • All existing document created before AutoUpload been switched on will not be automatically uploaded (at least until you’ll change/edit them). You’ll need to share them manually.
  • Documents will be shared as PDF. To share documents as Image (or text) please do this manually.

These icons appear when AutoUpload option is switch on and shows the actual status of document uploading. There could be two icons:

  1. Grey (SharpScan autoupload preparing) — shows that document in the queue for PDF preparation.
  2. Blue (SharpScan autoupload in progress) — shows that document is uploading to sharing service. When upload will be done icons will disappear.

OCR feature allows you to transform image taken from camera into editable text. You can test how OCR (optical character recognition) feature works in SharpScan before purchase it. To do this please follow the steps below.

  1. Open document and page you want to OCR.
  2. Tap on Txt icon (SharpScan text layer) on bottom toolbar. Text layer screen will open. Tap on Recognize button. On Language selection screen select desired language for recognition. If there were no any language selected before you’ll need to download at least one.
  3. Tap on All languages.
  4. Tap on language you need.
  5. After chosen language download will be finished and you’ll be able to select it. Just tap on it. Select mark (SharpScan selected mark) will appear.
  6. Tap on Select button on top toolbar. Selected language symbol will be displayed on bottom toolbar.
  7. Tap on Recognize button. When recognition process will be finished you’ll be able to see the results. Pages with text layer will have an additional text icon.

Important note.
You can recognize any amount of documents on any available languages and see results for free. To share resulted text (as text file or via Copy-and-Paste) you’ll need an additional in-app purchase (will be offered after sharing trial or from SharpScan Settings).