Summary
- The Google Drive app’s built-in scanner is getting upgraded with auto enhancement for higher-quality scans.
- This new functionality includes white balance correction, shadow removal, and contrast enrichment, among other automatic editing tools.
- The changes will be rolled out to all Drive users on Android and iOS starting early next year.
The Google Drive app is a powerful cloud storage solution with the ability to do a lot more than just store your files and documents online. It also serves as an excellent document scanner, with the built-in functionality only getting better with each update. Google has now announced a significant upgrade to the Drive app’s built-in scanner, bringing much-needed improvements to the scanning quality.
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In its weekly recap of the Workspace feature additions, Google said Drive will now leverage “auto enhancement” to turn standard paper-based documents “into higher quality images” at a faster pace.
This newly added functionality will manage aspects like white balance correction, shadow removal, contrast enrichment, auto sharpening, and light improvement, among other things, Google said. The company’s phrasing suggests these adjustments will vary based on the type of document going under the scanner.
Get rid of shadows from your scans
Screenshots shared by Google show how the auto enhancement function will work with smaller items, such as a takeaway order receipt. There’s some light and shadows on this receipt, as you can see in the first image above, but with the assistance of auto enhancement, the result looks much sharper.
This feature will undoubtedly take the pain out of document scanning, particularly in tricky lighting conditions. Google says it will gradually roll out these scanning improvements starting early next year to all Drive users through the Android and iOS apps, regardless of the Workspace tier they’re on. This means even people with personal Google accounts should find it on the app over the next few weeks.
Google has routinely made key changes to improve the scanning functionality in the Drive app. Just over a year ago, the app introduced a handy new Auto-capture toggle in the scanner to eliminate the need to align the camera with the document. The upcoming upgrade is easily the most critical feature addition to Drive’s built-in scanner since then. Meanwhile, in August, Google Drive started letting users save scanned items as JPEGs, with the app only supporting scans in the PDF format until that point.
