I always liked the idea behind JotNot Scanner: taking pictures on your iPhone and turning them into “scans” via a software algorithm built into the app. However, in my review of the first version I was still ambivalent about whether or not the scans were any better than the original untouched images. However, I’m glad to report I think that all of that has changed with the JotNot 2.0 update that came out yesterday.
An improved interface, new features (multi-page PDF’s, anyone?), and much cleaner scanned images have brought JotNot to a whole new level of usability, but it has come at a price: JotNot Scanner is now $9.99 on the App Store (up from $2.99), although the update is still free if you owned 1.0.
Hit the jump for a few more update impressions and pictures.
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- documents view
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- cleaner scans
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- image stabilization
[click on a a thumbnail for a bigger picture]
It’s actually been a while since I’ve used JotNot, but I’ve kept it installed on my iPhone because I think of it as one of those apps that could be ridiculously useful at a moment’s notice. I’ve kept all of my settings the same in v2.0 to help me compare it to the first. The new interface does take a little getting used to, and although I wouldn’t call it cleaner, it does pack a lot more features on-screen. The only hiccup I had was a bit of confusion with the “settings” button: it looks like a gear when you’re looking within a document, but it appears as an “i” when you’re on the main screen.
Creating a scan
One thing I liked about Jotnot 1.0 was how easy the scanning process was. You didn’t even have to set up a perfectly angled picture of the text you were scanning — as long as the words were in focus, JotNot could sort out the rest.
Now it’s even easier to create a scan in 2.0 because of the refresh button and image stabilization. If you choose to take a picture for a scan from right within the app, you can have the accelerometer signal take the picture when the iPhone isn’t shaking. The refresh button can then be used to tell the app to re-calculate how it should crop the picture in case it didn’t get it right the first time. You can even refresh images after you’ve already added them to your document.
Scanned Files
The biggest change in 2.0 is how much clearer the scanned images look in black and white with a white background. JotNot 1.0’s scans were legible, but not noticeably more so than the pictures I had taken. JotNot 2.0, however, is just a whole new ball game. The text just jumps right off the screen for me, and it looks great both on the iPhone and from within Evernote on my Mac.
Another great addition in 2.0 is multi-page support. You can now scan multi-page documents or just throw a whole set if images into one batch and then export them in an e-mail, send them to WebDAV/iDisk, or to the trusty Evernote Elephant. I mentioned in my initial JotNot review that you probably wouldn’t be scanning multiple pages from within the app, but now this could be a very real and practical possibility.
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TAGS: App update, jotnot, scanner
