This is Steveer Robbins. Welcome to the Get It Done guys, quick and dirty tips to work less and do more.

In ancient times, some cultures believe that having your picture taken would capture your soul.

But they didn't have smartphones. They never even considered that we would create entire devices like the iPhone X,

whose every new feature is dedicated solely to taking and retouching selfies

so that we can broadcast our images far and wide.

Oh, can you say the endless pursuit of narcissism?

I know you could.

Now, please share this episode on social media.

But our phone cameras can also be used to back up receipts and business cards, or to scan in copies of manuals we need for reference,

or to do an actual, actual real productivity job. And you know what? There are a jillion scanning

apps on the app store, all with slightly different features. Since scanning receipts and

business cards can become a major part of your workflow, let's review the different features that

you might want in a scanning app. Then, well, we'll review the five, yes, five, that I use most often.

Basic scanning consists of cropping and deskewing. What makes a scanning app different from just taking a picture is that a scanning app

lets you trim out the parts of the pictures you don't need.

That's called cropping.

So if you took a picture of a receipt on a desk, you could get rid of the picture of the desk

and just look at the receipt.

Also, if you took the picture at an angle, a document image could come out distorted

because of perspective, scanning apps will let you deskew the image, and that undistorts it back

to its original appearance.

Then you can apply filters to the image.

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