How does Evernote recognize a business card?

[RobertJSawyer 167]

Evernote's iOS app seems to recognize most business cards I try it with, but, frustratingly, not my own.

 

What precisely triggers Evernote to recognize something AS a business card?  I know I'm using the app properly, as it's recognizing other people's cards and creating a special rolodex-style note with the extracted information.

 

I'm of the school of thought that says you don't have to label data on your business card; for human users, the formatting of the data is enough to distinguish what a given element is:

 

(000) 000-000 is a North American area code and phone number

 

sawyer@xxxxxxxx.com is an email address

 

Is it the lack of the words "Phone" and "Email" on my business card that's causing Evernote to not recognize what it is?  Evernote has no trouble discerning the text and OCRing it, so it's not that it can't read it, and my business card is the North American standard size of 2x3.5," so the ratio of height to width, if that's the trigger, is normal, too.

 

A copy of the scan made by the Evernote app on my iPhone 5s with iOS 8 (with contact details blurred for privacy), and is at this link:  http://sfwriter.com/business-card-blurred.jpg

 

If there some way to force Evernote to treat a scan AS a business card?  You used to be able to do that with the previous versions of the app (where you selected the "Business Card" camera option before scanning), but that doesn't seem to exist in the latest upgrade.

 

Thanks!

 

Rob

[jbenson2 2,147]

So Evernote can read other business cards you have, but not yours.

The problem might be due to the blue text on the blue background.

[RobertJSawyer 167]

JBenson, as I said, Evernote has NO TROUBLE READING the business card:  searches on words on the card find the card; the text is being OCR'd and read just fine by Evernote.  But it's not recognizing it AS a business card, and so not creating the sort of rolodex-style database-note with extracted data it normally creates FOR a business card.

 

And, by the way, there is NO blue text on a blue background on the actual card; all the text is white (that is, devoid of any printed ink in any color).  The bluish wash to some of the text in the image I attached is the way Evernote photographed it on my iPhone 5s.

[gazumped 11,699]

Possible workarounds - use another (recognised) card with a blank other side;  

• scan your card on top of the blank - if there's a size issue maybe it'll come across as a blue card with white (or another colour) edges...  or if that doesn't work
   
• scan the blank card on its own,  which should give you a business card record with missing data,  and copy/ paste the information from the successful non-BC scan into the correct fields.  A pain,  I know,  but it 'should' work..

 

Can't suggest anything else to help card recognition,  but a bug report to Evernote Central might interest the card scan team.

[CalS 5,281]

It may be that your card is missing some markers to ID it as a business card versus a 2"  3.5" car. 

 

FWIW, as a test I took a pic of something business card sized with handwriting on it.  Before I saved it I used the drop down at bottom of the screen and selected Business Card.  The fields for a card are presented and I completed them.  Something of a PITA, but I have found that the OCR into the fields fails with some regularity anyway so I am used to modifying this data, since sometimes you can't get at it on the desktop.

 

Side bar,  have found that the proximity of the text in any given field on card makes a difference.  Sometimes the "(" is ignored, sometimes it messes up the phone number.  The bigger the spacing the better the read I have found, in my admittedly not scientific study.