A phone camera and a flatbed scanner capture the same page, but they fail in different ways. The scanner controls the light and the distance for you. On a phone, both are yours to manage, and almost every bad scan comes down to one of them.
Light beats megapixels
Put the page near a window, side-on rather than facing the sun. Overhead room lights throw your own shadow across the paper, which is the single most common reason a scan comes back grey and blotchy. If you must use the flash, hold the phone further back and zoom in, so the light spreads instead of blowing out the centre.
Shoot square to the page
Hold the phone parallel to the paper, not tilted over it. Perspective correction can rescue a small angle, but stretching a badly skewed photo smears the letters, and OCR accuracy falls off quickly once that happens.
Fill the frame
Leave a small border around the page and nothing more. Every pixel spent on your desk is a pixel not spent on the text.
Pick the right output
- Black and white for plain text: smallest file, sharpest letters.
- Greyscale for pages with photographs or stamps.
- Colour only when the colour carries meaning, such as a signature in blue ink or a highlighted clause.
Check before you send
Zoom to 100% on the smallest text in the document. If you cannot read it comfortably on screen, neither can the person receiving it, and neither can an OCR engine. Reshoot rather than send.
Name files so you can find them
A name like 2026-05-invoice-acme.pdf sorts itself chronologically and survives being emailed around. scan_0043.pdf does not.
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