Almost all printers a little more expensive today also have the function of a scanner, that is, they allow you to digitize printed written documents to bring them on PC as PDF or editable files. The scanner is, undoubtedly, a great convenience especially if you need to send a pen-signed document via email or when you need to fill out a form or if you have to write an essay starting from the page of a book or even when you want to bring an old photo to your PC printed on paper and also for making photocopies from home. When you have a scanner, whatever the brand, there will certainly be a program on the CD included in the package that must be installed both to make the computer recognize the scanner, and to actually use it, that is, to scan (or scan) and digitize pages and written sheets. As always, however, the included and predefined scanner program is not the most comfortable that you can get and there are alternative free programs to use the scanner from Windows PC that are even better, with more options and possibilities to optimize and customize the scans made .
READ ALSO: How to configure the scanner on Windows (10, 7, 8.1)
1) First of all, every Windows PC has its own tool to use any scanner even without installing anything .
To find it, just search on the Start menu " Digitize document " and then open the utility that allows you to save photos or documents as images or PDFs. The Windows tool is really simple and perfect for those who don't have big needs. Pressing on New digitization you can choose the profile of the scan, if image or written document, if in color or black and white, what type of file to create if JPG or PDF, the image quality, measured in DPI and then also brightness and contrast. The scanned documents are then automatically saved in a dedicated folder in the Documents .
2) The Microsoft Windows 10 Scanner app can be downloaded for free from the Microsoft Store and is the easiest to use. It automatically recognizes the scanner connected to the PC (also in wifi) and allows you to start the digitization of documents and sheets with an automatic configuration. The only options that can be changed are the format of the image file to be saved, the folder where the scans are saved and then, if in color or in black and white. If you click on Automatic configuration and set it as Source : Plan, you can preview the scan before doing it.
3) iCopy is a free open source program that allows you to use the printer and scanner in a combined way, even if they are separate from each other (and not included in a single multifunction device). With iCopy you can easily make photocopies automatically and, therefore, reprint written sheets or pages of books. Beyond this special function, iCopy is simply the universal program for scanners, very simple to use and easy to understand, which allows you to choose contrast quality, colors, brightness and save scans in PDF or JPG images.
4) WinScan2PDF is a portable and very simple and essential freeware program that allows you to scan documents and save them on your computer as PDF using any scanner installed. The program has only two buttons, needs no configuration and works well.
5) NAPS2 (Not Another PDF Scanner) is instead the most complete program to use a Windows PC scanner, in Italian, which offers more options than iCopy and compared to almost any predefined program. NAPS2 is able to save scans as PDF, JPG, PNG, TIFF files, to rotate the captured image, to move it, to crop images and then also to recognize written text through the OCR function, so that the text in the PDF is easily searchable or even editable. NAPS2 can also be downloaded in a portable version, i.e. without installation, to be ready for any computer even on a USB stick.
6) FreeOCR is one of the programs to convert scanned sheets of paper into texts and words to be modified, which also works starting directly from the scanner.
In another article, we see how to use the smartphone as a scanner with some apps for Android and iPhone .
Among these we cannot forget Microsoft Office Lens, which scans documents even without a scanner, from the PC webcam (Windows 10 and 8.1 only).
