Microsoft Lens vs Adobe Scan: Difference and Comparison

After Camscanner, Microsoft Office Lens and Adobe Scanner are two of the most popular document scanning programmes. Both provide the simplicity of transforming printed text to digital text with a single button click.

The only thing you’ll need is some good lighting, and the apps will take care of the rest.

Key Takeaways

1. Microsoft Lens is a mobile app that captures, enhances, and converts images to digital formats, while Adobe Scan does the same but is integrated with Adobe Document Cloud.
2. Microsoft Lens offers additional features like the whiteboard mode and immersive reader, while Adobe Scan provides advanced PDF editing and integration with Adobe Acrobat.
3. Both apps are free, but Adobe Scan offers more advanced features with an Adobe subscription.

Microsoft Lens vs Adobe Scan

Microsoft Lens is a mobile scanning application developed for Android, iOS, and Windows devices. It is integrated with the Microsoft Office 365 suite. Adobe Scan is a free mobile scanning app which is available for Android and iOS devices. It allows users to scan and save documents.

Microsoft Lens is a member of the Microsoft family. There are numerous programmes in the Microsoft family, including Microsoft PowerPoint, Microsoft Word, Microsoft Lens, and others.

Microsoft Lens was formerly known as Microsoft Office Lens, and it is used to scan photos and images into formats like PDF, JPG, Word, OneNote, and PowerPoint. It offers smart, intelligent operations like scanning QR codes for links, extracting text from documents, scanning tables, and reading text aloud, among others.

Adobe Scan is a member of the Acrobat group of applications. Adobe Acrobat is a collection of software applications and web services developed by Adobe.

Adobe Inc., sometimes known as “Adobe Systems Incorporated,” created this Adobe Acrobat. Adobe Lens is a programme that allows you to create, read, manipulate (edit), scan, print, and manage documents in the PDF (Portable Document Format) format.

Comparison Table

Parameters of Comparison	Microsoft Lens	Adobe Scan
Developer	It was developed by the Microsoft	It was developed by Adobe Inc. (Adobe Systems Incorporated).
Initial Release Date	It was relaunched with additional features in the year 2015.	It was launched on June 15 1993 (approximately 28 years ago).
Operating System	It can be operated in systems like Windows Phone (operating system) platforms, BREW, and Java mobile browsers.	It can be operated in systems like Windows, macOS, Linux, Android, iOS.
Storage	This scanner app has plenty of space to save documents in the phone’s gallery.	Adobe scan has limited storage, as it stores the file in the cloud.
Distortion and Scan Quality	While using Microsoft lens users may notice a little bit of colour bending.	Adobe Scan handles colours better.

What is Microsoft Lens?

Microsoft has produced “Microsoft Mobile Services,” which is a collection of mobile-specific services. They’re available for Windows Phone (operating system) platforms, BREW, and Java mobile browsers.

This is the most widely used smartphone application on the planet. It has limitations, such as the inability to scan numerous pages at once.

This constraint was overcome later in 2015, and Microsoft relaunched the office lens, this time under the name “Microsoft Lens” with many other additional features to get a better experience.

Microsoft Lens is a fantastic and highly powerful tool for capturing and sanitizing photos and documents. They’re used to scan data from documents, whiteboards, business cards, receipts, menus, signs, handwritten memos, and a variety of other items with text that you want to import and manually edit.

You won’t have to scribble down any notes by hand, rely on grainy cell phone photographs, or be concerned about misplacing anything with Microsoft Lens.

To use Microsoft Lens, the user must first create a Microsoft account. It’s ideal for storing drawings, sketches, and calculations that don’t have any writing on them.

It improves the image quality of photographs captured by standard cameras. This lens helps to eliminate shadows and strange angles that are difficult to avoid with a regular camera.

What is Adobe Scan?

Adobe scan is part of the Adobe Acrobat family of software, which includes Acrobat Reader (previously Reader), Acrobat (formerly Exchange), and Acrobat.com. Both mobile and desktop versions are available.

It is used to allow users to browse, print, and annotate PDF files. Acrobat is a programme that generates, edits, converts, digitally signs, exports, and publishes PDF files for Windows and Mac OS.

Adobe Lens is a programme that allows you to create, view, and modify PDF files. It is widely used for importing various types of documents and photos in PDF format.

It can import the output of a scanner, a website, and the contents of the Windows clipboard. It can update the text and graphics in documents, crop the pdf, rearrange the pages, manage the document’s hyperlinks, and many other things.

When a user downloads the Adobe Scan app, they must first create an Adobe account or connect to an existing one. It is free.

However, there are certain storage limitations with the free account; users who require advanced functionality must upgrade to a premium account. With a single click on the camera icon, you can begin scanning or capturing the image, which will fill the screen as much as feasible.

For detection and scanning, this app requires moderate lighting.

Main Differences Between Microsoft Lens and Adobe Scan

1. Microsoft lens is a Microsoft family software product, whereas Adobe scan is a part of Adobe Acrobat developed by “Adobe Inc.”
2. The Microsoft lens was previously called an “office lens,” and it does not support multiple scanning; however, Adobe Scan features a small icon on the left side that allows you to add additional pages.
3. When it comes to landscape scanning, Microsoft Lens is quite slow, whereas Adobe Scan is quite quick because it recognises the document layout instantaneously.
4. The borders are automatically detected by the Microsoft lens during the square up scan, while the boundary is manually modified after each scan in Adobe scan.
5. The Microsoft lens is simple, and it does not have any OCR software despite the fact that it may be used to scan. Adobe Scan, on the other hand, has numerous tools that allow you to reorder scans, annotate on top of them, and make additional comments.

References

1. https://ieeexplore.ieee.org/abstract/document/9297362/
2. https://iopscience.iop.org/article/10.1088/1742-6596/1803/1/012034/meta
3. https://www.mdpi.com/844920