Tip:
Highlight text to annotate it
X
Hello everyone. Michael here with The Daily Note II/3. Welcome to another tips & tricks
video Today I want to show you an app called Photo Reader and what makes this app so special.
This app extends the features of Samsung Keyboard and the Gallery app in a really interesting
way. It may also prove to be a crucial tool to have in your pocket when you're traveling
to a foreign country. So let's have a look at what this app can do.
So here is the app called Photo Reader. It's an app that will turn your text on paper into
characters for input. But that's not what makes this app special. It's special in the
way it expands the features of some of your Samsung apps on the Galaxy Note 2. I'm going
to install it on the Note 2, unfortunately at this time, it doesn't work on the Note
3, although I do see signs that they are still working it. More on that in a little bit.
So after you install it, let's open the gallery app. And say that you took a picture of a
document, or you have a screenshot of some text. When you hit menu, you will see a new
option there called "Detect text". Make sure you have the right language selected, and
there you go. You can make edits as necessary. You can even share it to google translate
and get a translation of that. Another thing this app does is it extends
the functions of your Samsung keyboard. Say you wanted to paste text of something you
were looking at onto something like S Note. You can do it by long-tappng on this button
next to the space button. And you will now see the camera with the T on there. Select
that it will activate the camera. You can scan something with text, snap the image.
Hit the check button, and now it's on your S Note.
One last thing, this app can be used as a stand alone app and it does entirely different
things. A practical feature you might find useful is this Dictionary mode which offers
a live foreign dictionary. If you've ever tried filling out a form in a foreign country,
this might be a lifesaver. Or if you were looking at a restaurant menu. You have to
make sure you have downloaded the right dictionary for this to work though.
In the mode called Direct link, it will recognize phone numbers, email addresses, and web addresses,
to create links for you to make calls, send email, or check out that website. I think
this feature would be nice if it worked quicker and more reliably when, for example, grabbing
a link from your computer monitor. It seems to struggle with this especially because of
how camera sensor bands subpixels together. It certainly helps when you get a little further
away. Also, it seems to cut off the link when there is a question mark in the link which
is unfortunate because most links today do contain question marks.
A couple of tips. Since getting a clear image is key, you need to make sure of a things.
Make sure the picture you're taking is shot with good lighting, make sure it's in focus
and the lens isn't smudged, and make sure the text is upright to the orientation of
the app. As mentioned, it doesn't seem to work on the
Note 3. I side-loaded the latest version of the app because I couldn't install it through
the Google Play store. It used to crash but now says my device doesn't have free space,
which is not true. I can access it through the gallery app, but cannot access the other
functions shown in this video. So that's Photo Reader. A powerful app that
comes with unique ways to extend the functionality of your Samsung apps and then some. I don't
know of any other apps that extend the functionality of Samsung apps in such clever ways but if
you do find one or know of one, make sure you share that info in the comments below.
Also, I hope that Samsung updates this app to make it work with the Note 3 because it
really is a great tool to have in your pocket for those who need it.
So that's it for this video. More tips to come for the Galaxy Note 2 and 3 if you enjoyed
this video please make sure to hit that like button and subscribe for upcoming videos.
And as always, thank you for watching.