Free document scanner

A photograph of a document is not a scan. It leans, the lamp puts a grey gradient down one side, and the paper is never quite white. This tool fixes all three: it finds the four corners of the page, pulls the picture flat so the edges are square again, divides out the shadow so the paper goes white and the ink goes black, and saves the result as a PDF or an image with a real resolution written into it. Photograph several pages and they become one PDF, in the order you dropped them. Nothing is uploaded: the work happens inside your browser, on your own device.

How to use it

1. Photograph the page Lay it on a surface that is not the same colour as the paper, and get all four corners in the frame. Straight overhead is best but an angle is fine — that is what the straightening is for.
2. Check the corners Four circles appear on the page it found. Drag any that sat in the wrong place; on a busy background you may want to place all four yourself.
3. Pick the finish Colour removes the shadow and keeps the ink as it is. Black & white is the crispest and the smallest for plain text. Greyscale sits between them.
4. Save it One PDF for a multi-page document, or JPG and PNG images. The resolution you choose is written into the file, so a form that checks for 300 dpi is satisfied.

Questions

How do I scan a document with my phone for free?

Photograph the page, drop it here and the page is found, straightened and cleaned automatically. There is no app to install, no account, no watermark, and the photograph never leaves your phone — the whole thing runs in the browser.

Can I scan several pages into one PDF?

Yes. Drop all the photographs at once, or add them one at a time; each becomes a page in a single PDF in the order shown. Use the page buttons to check the corners on each one.

The corners are in the wrong place. Can I fix them?

Drag them. Automatic detection looks for the largest pale shape, which is the page in most photographs but not on a white table or a patterned cloth. Drag each circle onto a corner and the result is exactly as good.

Why does my scan look better than the photograph?

Two reasons. The page is pulled flat with a projective transform, so an edge photographed at an angle becomes straight rather than merely cropped. Then the tool divides the picture by a blurred copy of itself, which removes the uneven light a lamp or a window leaves behind, and stretches what is left so paper reads as white.

Is this a free CamScanner alternative?

It does the same job — detect, straighten, clean, save as PDF — with no app, no sign-up, no watermark and no page limit, and it does not upload your documents to anyone.

What resolution should I choose?

300 dpi for anything going to print or to an office. 200 dpi is enough for a form upload and makes a noticeably smaller file. 600 dpi only helps if you will enlarge the page or run text recognition on very small print.

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