Apple Document scanner in Apple Notes as of May 2023 has a weird UX quirk which unfortunately results in the users not gaining the full potential of their device.
When scanning a document, the camera viewport is zoomed in to extend to the full height of the screen. While this looks nice, it encourages the user to back away from the document, trying to fit the document in the visible viewport.
If Apple were to set the camera view to "fit" instead of "fill" (to use the common language employed elsewhere in the photo world) then users would realize that they could get much closer to their documents, taking fuller advantage of all the megapixels their camera has to offer.
This is of particular importance to me in my document scanning workflow, because it basically means that all of my past document scans are lower resolution than they could be.
Let me provide visual explanations if the above isn't yet clear.
In this first .gif, you can see that the camera view extends to the full height of the screen, so I try to position the document within that.
In this second gif, you can see all the wasted pixels that I didn't use up, the empty desk space above and below my document.
Thanks to the UX of the camera viewer, I have wasted upwards of 30% of my camera's available resolution, thus resulting in a lower quality scan. This is obviously very important to me, as my scanned documents are part of my record of thought.
I'm sure Apple recognizes the importance of this. I just don't think they see how their UX has resulted in such a detrimental outcome. (I'm being dramatic, of course. But not really)
Apple Document scanner in Apple Notes as of May 2023 has a weird UX quirk which unfortunately results in the users not gaining the full potential of their device.
When scanning a document, the camera viewport is zoomed in to extend to the full height of the screen. While this looks nice, it encourages the user to back away from the document, trying to fit the document in the visible viewport.
If Apple were to set the camera view to "fit" instead of "fill" (to use the common language employed elsewhere in the photo world) then users would realize that they could get much closer to their documents, taking fuller advantage of all the megapixels their camera has to offer.
This is of particular importance to me in my document scanning workflow, because it basically means that all of my past document scans are lower resolution than they could be.
Let me provide visual explanations if the above isn't yet clear.
In this first .gif, you can see that the camera view extends to the full height of the screen, so I try to position the document within that.
In this second gif, you can see all the wasted pixels that I didn't use up, the empty desk space above and below my document.
Thanks to the UX of the camera viewer, I have wasted upwards of 30% of my camera's available resolution, thus resulting in a lower quality scan. This is obviously very important to me, as my scanned documents are part of my record of thought.
I'm sure Apple recognizes the importance of this. I just don't think they see how their UX has resulted in such a detrimental outcome. (I'm being dramatic, of course. But not really)
Apple Document scanner in Apple Notes as of May 2023 has a weird UX quirk which unfortunately results in the users not gaining the full potential of their device.
When scanning a document, the camera viewport is zoomed in to extend to the full height of the screen. While this looks nice, it encourages the user to back away from the document, trying to fit the document in the visible viewport.
If Apple were to set the camera view to "fit" instead of "fill" (to use the common language employed elsewhere in the photo world) then users would realize that they could get much closer to their documents, taking fuller advantage of all the megapixels their camera has to offer.
This is of particular importance to me in my document scanning workflow, because it basically means that all of my past document scans are lower resolution than they could be.
Let me provide visual explanations if the above isn't yet clear.
In this first .gif, you can see that the camera view extends to the full height of the screen, so I try to position the document within that.
In this second gif, you can see all the wasted pixels that I didn't use up, the empty desk space above and below my document.
Thanks to the UX of the camera viewer, I have wasted upwards of 30% of my camera's available resolution, thus resulting in a lower quality scan. This is obviously very important to me, as my scanned documents are part of my record of thought.
I'm sure Apple recognizes the importance of this. I just don't think they see how their UX has resulted in such a detrimental outcome. (I'm being dramatic, of course. But not really)
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