Doing my research for this article I stumbled across a news article published July 26th, 2001 which said merging a PDA (personal digital assistant) and a camera was like chocolate and oranges. The article continues with why not have a can opener or a tear gas attachment for your PDA. I guess the author of that article was skeptic about what was going to become a revolution in the world of photography.

Many of us started with a Palm Pilot and using the 640 x 480-pixel camera with very limited storage and no flash while others were paying $279 for a 2.1-megapixel camera. Oh, how times have changed! As of today, and could change tomorrow the two most powerful smartphone cameras on the market is the Pixel 4 and 4XL using the Android operating system with a 12.2-megapixel main lens and 16-megapixel telephoto lens. The Apple iPhone 11 has a 12-megapixel camera, amazing how we have grown since 2000.

The one thing that hasn’t changed since Mathew Brady was snapping pictures of the Civil War is the camera operator. For most of us our smartphone camera has outgrown us and offers features and capabilities we will never use, unless you decide to take a deep dive into what you have available. I am not qualified or have enough space in this article to get into how to improve your picture taking skills, but there are many of options available to you by checking out YouTube and Google.

I do have a suggestion on an app that will help the average smartphone camera user to produce a better picture. Snapseed is a free app available for both Apple and Android operating systems. I downloaded it and have played with it briefly and see the potential for enhancing and adding filters to your photos! If you want to get serious about the quality of your pictures you might want to take a look at Adobe Lightroom that has a $9.99 a month premium or Adobe Photoshop Express which is free.

Let’s add a new phrase to our technology lingo, Optical Character Recognition otherwise known as OCR. In plain English, it is the electronic or possibly the mechanical conversion of images of handwritten, printed or typed text into machine-encoded text, whether using a scanned document, a picture of a document or text superimposed on an image. Got that?

So, what’s the best OCR for your smartphone? I really don’t like picking one app or program but in this case, I must, Adobe Scan! Just so you know I am not getting some sort of kickback the app is FREE! Adobe Scan is available for both Apple and Android users, to me it’s one of the easiest apps to use and will serve you for almost all your scanning needs. I recommend you download it and play with it before needing it for real.

I hope this article helps, picture taking, photo editing and scanning can be a book on each subject but I wanted to make it as easy as possible. Most of us are fairly happy with the end product we produce, adding a simple app or two can definitely enhance our finished product!