If you’ve bothered to take a peek into Evernote lately, you might well have noticed a new feature…one that is seriously impressive. If not, you are in for a treat. For anyone that snaps photos of documents (in an attempt to go paperless, or simply to be able to share said document with others), you know how challenging it can be to get the perfect shot of the image. Evernote has fixed that problem with a new Automatic Mode that automatically detects a document size and type the minute you point your camera. This feature is dead-on every time and makes the process of snapping photos of documents easier than any app I’ve ever used.

Of course, once you’ve snapped the photo of the document, you can then save the image as a photo, document, color document, Post-it Note, or business card. Depend on the type the image is saved as, you can annotate the saved image and more.

But how does this miraculous new feature work? Simple. Let me show you how.

Capturing an image

The only thing you must do, in order to take advantage of this new feature, is upgrade to the latest version of Evernote. How this is done will depend upon your platform. For example, on the Android platform, do the following:

  1. Open up the Google Play Store
  2. Swipe right from the left edge of the device
  3. Tap My apps & games
  4. Locate and tap Evernote
  5. If available, tap the Update button

Evernote should now be at the latest release.

Open the Evernote app and tap the + button. Select Camera and point your device at the document to be scanned. You should notice four green lines attempting to surround the image (Figure A). When those green lines have successfully captured the image, tap the screen and Evernote will snap the photo. Unless you need to snap another photo, tap the checkmark and you’re ready to save or annotate.

Figure A

Evernote capturing an image on a Verizon-branded Nexus 6.

Tap on the note and then tap the Edit button (green circle in the bottom right corner) and you can start annotating (Figure B).

Figure B

Annotating a note.

When you complete the annotation, tap the Save button and you’re done.

It doesn’t get any easier

This latest iteration of evernote has made it incredibly easy to go paperless. Even if you’ve never been good at snapping photos of documents, Evernote will take care of making sure that note looks as good as the original.