Microsoft Lens and Adobe Scan mobile app - Scan documents and images to PDF

Difference Between Microsoft Lens and Adobe Scan Mobile

These free apps features OCR technology for text recognition, allow image capture and selection from your device, and converts them to PDFs stored in Adobe Document Cloud. It also offers PDF editing tools like cropping, color adjustment, and page management, with the option to save images as JPEGs, share via email in your OneDrive and more. Edit PDFs in Acrobat, Students can submit content using the Canvas student app.

Microsoft Lens

ios/Android

Adobe Scan

ios/Android

Free to use, integrates with OneDrive, SharePoint, and other Microsoft apps. Staff and registered students can use their SVSU email address.

Free to use, we do not have Adobe Document Cloud licensing (cannot authenticate with an SVSU email address). SVSU only has licensing for Adobe Creative Cloud.

Features

  • Easy, multiple save options.
  • Features: Document, Whiteboard, Business card, and Photo scans
  • Auto-detect, doesn't instantly capture, but does crop automatically, can adjust later.
  • Does not apply additional light to scanned items, use filters to find the perfect color.
  • Offers text recognition (OCR).
  • Offers multi-page capture (choose the Camera+ icon).
  • Export to an Office program, save as a PDF, image, or log in with your SVSU email address to save to the cloud.

Features

  • Best scan quality, easiest to use, save to the cloud.
  • Features: Document, Business Card, Whiteboard, and Form scans. 
  • Auto-detect and captures any item instantly can adjust the borders after every scan.
  • Applies additional light to scans, and provides other color filters. Detects background light better.
  • Offers text recognition (OCR), lets you copy the text and paste where you need it. 
  • Multi-page scanning is divided into separate pages, can reorder them. 
  • Export as a PDF saves to the cloud only with 5GB storage, can copy to your device. You need to log in with a personal email address before using the app.

Mobile apps
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Mobile apps
 

​​​​​​iOS: Download Adobe Scan (12.0 or later)
Android: Download Adobe Scan (6.0 or later)​​​​​​​

Microsoft Resources

Adobe Resources

You can view a comparison list of other mobile scanning apps (right side of the page) under the "Attachments" section. However, SVSU ITS recommends using Adobe Scan and/or Office Lens. 
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Use Acrobat to create PDFs from an Office application or export a PDF to an Office format, add fields to PDF documents to create user-friendly, fillable forms, combine several PDFs into a single PDF, extract pages, reduce/compress your PDF file size, use Adobe Scan to create digital copies of documents and images and share them as a PDF.
The article contains a vast range of software and resources for faculty, staff, and students to teach and collaborate online.