Poor image quality in Adobe Scan Android

[realmasters]

The addition of the cleanup function in the latest version of Adobe Scan Android is a real bonus for me - I regularly scan documents which have been marked up by previous readers.

However, one area that I am very disappointed by is the quality of the images taken by the app.

I scanned the same few pages in a document in Adobe Scan Android and in CamScanner under exactly the same lighting conditions, which is to say good, fairly even lighting. Unfortunately the scans that resulted in Adobe Scan Android were quite poor in comparison to CamScanner. I attach a page from each PDF to illustrate.

This is disappointing from Adobe given the extensive experience that they have in image capture and manipulation.  If it cannot be *much* better by default, can we at least have a configuration option to set the quality of the images?

[Meenakshi Negi]

Hi there,

As you have mentioned that the image quality of the Adobe Scan is not good, could you please confirm if the issue occurs with all the documents you scan?

Did you try to change the color effect options provided in the Adobe Scan app? If not, please try once. Check if that makes any difference.

We do appreciate your feedback. You may also suggest your feedback with the team over here https://adobe.allegiancetech.com/cgi-bin/qwebcorporate.dll?YQWCX7

Let us know if you need any help.

Regards,

Meenakshi

[realmasters]

Hi Meenakshi - thanks for the response.

The issue seems to be that Adobe Scan Android (ASA) is not good in dealing with slightly varying light conditions when in "auto color" mode.  I try very hard to get even lighting across the whole page (capturing in document mode) but ASA doesn't seem to be able to compensate for even the slightest variations, hence the top of the sample page on my first post being washed out.  You will see that CamScanner deals with it pretty well.

This what I find surprising from Adobe with their huge amount of image processing experience - when capturing and converting a simple document page it should be possible to even out the brightness and contrast across the page, especially in 'auto' mode.

I have tried the other 'color' options but the results vary quite a lot and not in a predictable way. It is not clear to me exactly what the different options are meant to do (apart from original color) and I don't have time to experiment with each one on every page. I would appreciate seeing better documentation explaining what these four options do (or are meant to do) - is that possible?

I have raised this issue directly with Adobe via the feedback link but thought it would be helpful to see what others' experiences are.

(BTW I think the mix in ASA of:

• Document type: whiteboard, form, document, business card
• Color: original color, auto color, grayscale, whiteboard

has not been thought our very well, especially the 'color' options. Why is 'whiteboard' in both lists? How does 'whiteboard' differ from the others in the colour options?)

Thanks,

Richard

[lindac24099673]

Hi! I have The exact same experience. And agree on problems whit few and strange options to handel colors after scanning. Darker/lighter. More/less contrast etc would be meaningful. I work as a script supervisor in film and daily scan my notes - handwriting on paper blanketS whit printed lines. Have done it whit CamScanner, and it always worked no matter the light condition. It even looks better than the original. Though I figuerd since I have an Adobe accont it would be better to use the Adobe Scan App - I pay for it! But the app dont manage the job. When my assistant whit an iPhone use the app - it works. When I do it using Android (Samsung and Huawei) its not possible to read. And Ive tryed all the options on around 50 pages over the past 4 days.  There is no meningsfull differens using auto, whiteboard etc. The lines in The scan ed document are to thin, and dont hold together. So Im going back to CamScanner. 

[Protean Man]

I am finding the same or similar problem. I even setup a tripod with my phone, a black flat background, and even lighting. The phone doesn't move. I let it focus and then scan multiple documents. Tried with and without flash on the phone. 

The results are varied. Some are fine but others are half blurry or not readable at all. 

This seems to be an issue with the app controlling the camera. I use a Galaxy 21 ultra. Some of the best cameras out there right now. Still gives terrible results.

[Mike285845308n1z]

I'm having the same problems.  Left side of documents is either blurry, severely faded or completely washed out.  This is a problem that needs to be fixed as it appears that it has been happening at least since 2019.  I am using a Galaxy s22 Ultra.  

[John294687399law]

Hi Mike.

I have this same problem with the same phone as yours. I find it sometimes helps if I scan from a greater distance and use some zoom. When the phone is very close to the document, there is a greater difference in focal length between the centre of the document and the edges, which might explain the blurring. 

[boonahcranes]

Is there a solution for this issue yet?  My iphone scans our dockets (carbon copies) beautifully but when my staff use their android phones the dockets are blank.  Very frustrating

[S. S]

Hi @boonahcranes,

Hope you are doing well. Sorry for your experience with Adobe Scan.

Have you tried disabling/ enabling OCR by going to Profile-> Preferences-> toggle the "Run Text Recognition" button?

Hope this helps.

-Souvik.

[Protean Man]

I have had similar issues on Android devices. Using both the Samsung phones - multiple generations from 10-21, and now the Google Pixel 7 --- the image quality and rendering quality of the final images is very poor. I have to rescan pages multiple times to get even a decent result. This did not used to happen and I have noticed a massive drop in quality over the past two years - maybe from some backend updates in the app?

I don't think that it is the phones since the Samsung and Google phones have some of the best cameras in the market. A colleague who uses an iPhone has amazing results when scanning the same pages and I just don't understand why. A clean page with very crisp black ink will be faded on some parts of it with my phone but perfect on the iPhone. So this is obviously an issue with the app on Android phones. 

I attached some screen shots from the app. The app seems to have a hard time with white balance and pixel density/quality. If I adjust the settings after scanning it makes no difference. The initial image that the app takes is just low quality and not in focus.

Hope this helps.

[AndyPhu]

And it's not the phones fault, it's the Android version of Adobe scan that is broken.

[S. S]

Hi @AndyPhu,

Hope you are doing well. Thanks for writing in!

We made certain changes to the camera libraries that Adobe Scan uses. Do you still experience quality issues with the latest version of Adobe Scan?

If yes, please share a screenshot of the image captured by Adobe Scan compared to the one you click on your device's camera. This helps our dev team investigate better.

Look forward to hearing from you.

-Souvik

[AndyPhu]

Yes, I'm still running into the same issue

[S. S]

@AndyPhu, as asked above, please share a screenshot of the image captured by Adobe Scan compared to the one you click on your device's camera. This helps our dev team investigate better.

-Souvik

[AndyPhu]

I will provide one when I find time to get around to it.

[S. S]

@AndyPhu, We are on standby.

Thanks,
Souvik

[Catalina3824318036ox]

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