Resize photo (or select lower resolution before taking picture)

[lisec 283]

The problem:

I need my (Android) camera to use the maximum resolution most of the time, but when I'm taking pictures of receipts or documents, whether I have Evernote set to use my Galaxy Note 3 camera or the 'Evernote' camera, the resolution is always way too high. I end up having to go to my desktop to open the various Evernote notes, right-clicking on each picture and resizing the image to 25% with Snag-it, saving, then repeating for each of the pictures I took. It's a real time sucker, but I don't feel right knowing that a picture of a receipt is as high quality (and therefore 'high' MB) as a picture of the sunset in Santorini. 

My proposed solutions (in order):

1. Allow me to set the Evernote Camera to always take pictures at a specific (lower) resolution, or
2. Include "resize image to x %" option when right-clicking on an image in Windows or in the hamburger menu in Android.

[gazumped 11,664]

Hi. 

I agree something within Evernote would be a good idea - saving a lot of external activity and making receipt copying easier. 

It's good practice to keep picture sizes low,  but you may be restricting the OCR feature if the resolution drops below a certain point.  I had a search around the help pages but can't find anything from Evernote confirming details - though I'm sure I recall a post somewhere about Evernote's camera feature reducing the quality of pictures automatically to limit storage issues.  It's certainly a bad idea to store pictures in Evernote that you want to use in HD later.

Android image compression apps would allow you to reduce the size of an image - some examples here - so it should be possible to take pictures to the Android gallery,  reduce the files sizes and then attach to Evernote notes from the gallery or (paying members only) send them to the correct account / notebook via email.

If Scannable makes it to Android that might be an option - it's specifically designed for scanning documents anyway;  or you could look at other documents scanner apps like CamScanner (free) which may have quality options of their own, and do OCR and upload to Evernote.

 

 

 

[DTLow 5,736]

17 hours ago, lisec said:

Allow me to set the Evernote Camera to always take pictures at a specific (lower) resolution

We have the size option for the Evernote camera in IOS, but lose it with the Scannable app

As per @gazumped, I'd look at a different capture app if it's a concern.  Many of them have a size option

[gazumped 11,664]

4 minutes ago, DTLow said:

We have the size option for the Evernote camera in IOS

Hmmn.  But not,  sadly,  over here in Android country...   (Not on my Samsung Note 4 anyway:  ymmv)

[lisec 283]

3 hours ago, gazumped said:

you may be restricting the OCR feature if the resolution drops below a certain point.

Thanks gazumped.  Even at a 25% reduction my receipts still end up being well over 800x600, which ought to be good enough for OCR. On the other hand, I know exactly Zero about OCR so I could be full of it.

Quote

I'm sure I recall a post somewhere about Evernote's camera feature reducing the quality of pictures automatically to limit storage issues.  It's certainly a bad idea to store pictures in Evernote that you want to use in HD later.

Yeah, I think I discovered that the last time I was in Greece, but I can't be sure. I know that none of the exif info was saved and that just about did me in. . I was taking my photos directly with the Evernote Camera because it was so neat to take a picture and immediately jot down travel diary-type stuff about the picture. I didn't bother including where I was because the GPS was taking care of that. I also didn't bother with when I took the picture, knowing it would be in the exif info when I got back home. I was not in a good mood when I discovered all that info had been stripped.  I even lost the time because I merged all notes (with pictures) to create 1 note per day.

Quote

Android image compression apps would allow you to reduce the size of an image - some examples here - so it should be possible to take pictures to the Android gallery,  reduce the files sizes and then attach to Evernote notes from the gallery or (paying members only) send them to the correct account / notebook via email.

If Scannable makes it to Android that might be an option - it's specifically designed for scanning documents anyway;  or you could look at other documents scanner apps like CamScanner (free) which may have quality options of their own, and do OCR and upload to Evernote.

That was my thinking... I started looking for some yesterday. Looks like that might work. I wish I could just have a shortcut on my phone's main page for two cameras - one for photos and one for docs, but I haven't found anything that will allow me to do that yet. Still looking. I didn't think of a scanner app though. That might do the trick.

2 hours ago, DTLow said:

We have the size option for the Evernote camera in IOS, but lose it with the Scannable app

You kill me with your "Ah shoot, that's too bad for you Android users, because WE have the feature you want in IOS" ;-)

[DTLow 5,736]

17 minutes ago, lisec said:

You kill me with your "Ah shoot, that's too bad for you Android users, because WE have the feature you want in IOS" ;-)

Sorry you read it that way.  I'm always more hopeful for feature requests if I see they've been implemented on other platforms.

I still recommend looking at different apps.  I know the size  feature is available

[lisec 283]

22 minutes ago, DTLow said:

Sorry you read it that way.  I'm always more hopeful for feature requests if I see they've been implemented on other platforms.

I still recommend looking at different apps.  I know the size  feature is available

I'm teasing you.

[jlfreund 1]

I currently have to manually shrink each photo in photoshop elements on my desktop every time I include an image (which is frequently), which takes a lot of time.

Without shrinking, evernote becomes really slow at scrolling the note, and the note is unreadable since the text doesn't flow well around a fullscreen image.

I really like the idea of including a quick "Image Scale" menu option in all of the evernote clients.  I often drag and drop images on my desktop into evernote (screenshots of apps, photos of whiteboard drawings) because my desktop has all the software to access photos from anywhere.  I never want to capture a new image directly from Evernote.

 

[DTLow 5,736]

3 hours ago, jlfreund said:

Without shrinking, evernote becomes really slow at scrolling the note, and the note is unreadable since the text doesn't flow well around a fullscreen image.

A workaround is to use a two column table.  Picture in one cell, text in the other

The picture size is also constrained to the cell borders

[lisec 283]

1 hour ago, DTLow said:

A workaround is to use a two column table.  Picture in one cell, text in the other

The picture size is also constrained to the cell borders

DTLow, that is a good workaround. I used to do that but I stopped a few months ago. I think I discovered that It didn't translate well when looking at the note in Android, or maybe just specifically on the phone. Responsive content (auto shrinking for smaller devices) is a tad problematic when dealing with tables. I wish I could remember the exact issue I was having..