Occasionally I still prefer a physical book (or am gifted one) over an e-book. But it's useful to have a digital copy of a chapter or two, either to read on the go without lugging the whole book around with me or to carry all the time for revision and reference.

A few printed books now come with the option to download an e-book counterpart, but not nearly enough for my choosing. I have a flatbed scanner, but it's a bit of a faff for more than a couple of pages, I balk at the idea of scanning large sections of a book. Smartphone cameras however, have reached the point where they make pretty decent copies. With good lighting and a tripod they can quickly and easily be positioned over multiple pages.

There are two great apps on Google Play that will scan documents with the camera and refine them, boosting brightness and contrast to replicate a dedicated scanner's output: Microsoft Lens and Adobe Scan . Using a small tripod with my phone attached I can have a book chapter scanned and ready to take on the road in just a few minutes.

Of the two I think I prefer the Adobe offering, which is more automated; it will detect when a document is placed under the camera and automatically take the picture. Lens waits for the user to click to take a picture and prompts for additional pages. The output from Scan is closer to scanner output too, blowing out the highlights and producing higher contrast while Lens produces a sepia look. It is possible to pass the resulting scans through OCR for clean digital output, but I've found this to be too slow and error-prone for long documents.