Whiteboard scanning: not amazing yet, was better before

[willgill 3]

Hi,

 

I use scannable multiple times daily to scan whiteboards, so I was excited to hear about the special Whiteboard scanning mode.

Sadly, I'm left quite disappointed by it.

 

1. My biggest complaint is that the quality of the text in the Whiteboard scan mode is a LOT poorer than it was before. The colours have this washed-out water-colour effect which adds no value and is just visually distracting - but the biggest pain is that the stroke is a lot thicker now, which makes small text on a whiteboard impossible to read. The quality before - when you were applying the same colour correction to whiteboards as you do to documents - worked great for whiteboards in my opinion, and it's really sucky now.
2. Whiteboards are automatically PDFs now, instead of images. This means you can't re-size them within the Evernote note anymore. This is irritating. 

Generally, Scannable is one of the few apps I use every single day. I've found a workaround for these issues - but I hope a) you don't kill the workaround I found, and you improve the whiteboard mode or just revert back to how it was.

 

Keep up the good work.

cheers

 

[PeeJayTee 99]

We won't kill it  Thanks!

[PeeJayTee 99]

Thanks for the feedback, Will.  I'm sorry you're not enjoying the whiteboard changes.  I'd love to see some example images that are sucky now... feel free to DM me.

 

Regarding the PDFs, you can change the file type in the settings of the app to "Images" - this should make sure they stay "un-PDFed".

 

I hope this helps!

P.J.

[willgill 3]

Hi P.J.,

 

thanks for your reply.

 

I did a simple test: I put some text on a whiteboard and took two snaps: one allowing the new Whiteboard mode to enhance the colour, and then a second snap of the same board after I apply my marvellous workaround and allow the colour to be enhanced by the old method. Just look at the difference in legibility of the text. It's like night and day. The old method leaves the text crisp, clear and highly legible, and the new method is a far less legible wash of colour and fat strokes. 

 

For further comparison, I included a snap I took of the opening hours at a doctor's surgery. Scannable defaulted to Whiteboard mode. Look how illegible the text becomes - it just looks silly.

 

Also - on your note about file types. The settings lets you pick ALL images, ALL PDF, or auto. According to the description, Auto should save single snaps as images, and multiple ones as PDFs. That's great - but the problem is in Whiteboard mode, ALL snaps are saved as PDFs - even single ones. But what I really want is that single whiteboards are images... just like other kinds of snaps.

 

 

Whiteboard - old style: https://www.dropbox.com/s/61e90elbo0ywe1g/whiteboard%20-%20old.png?dl=0

Whiteboard - new style: https://www.dropbox.com/s/2rpicdp64nxmm0v/whiteboard%20-%20new.pdf?dl=0

Doctor's opening hours example: https://www.dropbox.com/s/v1mcy1mzc5d6bur/snap%20of%20doctor%27s%20opening%20hours.pdf?dl=0

 

I hope this helps to get to the bottom of what's going on.

cheers

will.

[PeeJayTee 99]

Thanks, Will.  Sorry - my email notifications appear to be broken so I didn't see these until today.  We'll take a look at the image quality.  I can tell you that something is weird in the new style - it looks like some nasty compression is happening after vectorization.  What is the marvelous workaround that you mentioned?

 

Regarding the file types, you're absolutely right.  I believe we've fixed this in the beta - feel free to join from within the app - Settings>>Feedback>>Join the Beta Program.

 

Thanks!
P.J.

[willgill 3]

Thanks P.J. I'll check out the Beta.

I'm a little nervous revealing my workaround with you - it's probably not intended behaviour, and what if you 'fix' the bug and I'm left with no workaround?!?

 

but OK - since you'll probably find it sooner or later anyways. After taking the photo, Scannable detects that it's a whiteboard and applies the new crazy whiteboard rendering. If you tap 'restore', and then 'enhance', it enhances it as a normal document, no longer detecting that it's a whiteboard. 

 

Please don't kill my workaround!