Desktop Computers Will Become Obsolete (Part 1): Adobe’s Role

In just a few years, most “office” work will not be done at a desk.

old computer outdated technology legal techDesktop computers tether us to one spot. There are three main reasons why people use desktop computers: (1) screen size, (2) computing power, and (3) better input tools, like a mouse and full-sized keyboard. Of course, in the last seven years or so, we’ve seen computing power in laptops make significant strides, such that many laptops are as good or better than most office desktops. Phones are quickly playing catchup in the area of computing power. As I mentioned last week, Microsoft is coming out with weird new computers that are blurring the line between desktops, laptops, and tablets, and coming out with complementary software that is changing our business culture and encouraging mobility. My prediction is that in seven more years, most “office” work will not be done at a desk, and we’re going to see a rise in hardware and software that is going to further encourage mobile work.

Adobe is also onboard with the mobile workforce culture change. Last fall, at the Adobe Max conference, Adobe announced the integration of their new artificial intelligence machine learning tool called Adobe Sensei, which is going to be the backbone of a lot of the new features that Adobe is releasing. Last night, they announced a new free mobile app, Adobe Scan, with some great new features to make it easier to get work done on the go that leverages the artificial intelligence features in Sensei. Here’s how it works and why you should care.

Mobile Scanning

The process of getting a document, printing it, signing it, scanning it, and sending it is a wasteful process, not just because it takes extra time, but because it requires senders and receivers to be tethered to their desktop computers within a short span of each other to make the process take less than 30 minutes. (For example, I recently needed a document signed by another attorney on one of my cases, but she was two hours away in a meeting.)

First 100 downloaders. #earlyadopter

First 100 downloaders. #earlyadopter

Adobe Scan and Adobe’s esignature tools, integrated into their mobile platforms, help eliminate unnecessary headaches.

Adobe Scan allows me to use my camera to take pictures of documents, and then uses Adobe Sensei to make the pictures look like something you scanned in the office by running a series of image enhancements and recognition features to produce a polished finished product. I know when I got my first Android phone maybe six years ago, one of the top apps was a camera scanner that let you scan something with your phone’s camera. The big difference here with Adobe Scan is that by utilizing Adobe Sensei, it is able to create something that is not a quick temporary fix. You can now do fast, legitimate scans with your phone.

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Here’s a document that I have on my desk that I want to turn into a scan:

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After I take a picture, Sensei makes some adjustments to straighten the image. When I go to adjust the edges, I get a magnified zoom window showing me exactly where I’m putting the crop box to help me line up the corners better.

Here’s a portion of the finished image. You can tell from the photo that it’s taken in low light and the document has different lighting across it. You can also kind of see text from the other side of the two-sided document showing through in the original. The top left corner is also slightly bent where the staple is in the original. The scan comes across clean and with no sign of folded corners.

clio

Sponsored

Here’s another document that is an instruction manual with about eight-point-font text. The original came folded up like a map on very thin paper, so it was very wrinkly. As you can see, the final product is clear and does not look like a phone camera picture.

Screenshot_20170601-014924

As soon as it takes the picture to create the scan, it begins the OCR process to convert it to text. Even small font text was able to be recognized and searchable. This is important because most, if not all, court electronic filing systems require that a document be OCR’ed before it is efiled.

Documents that I scan with my phone are accessible on my computer later via Document Cloud. When I open up Acrobat, it automatically shows me the files I just scanned with my phone:

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So, getting a piece of paper to my computer with my phone in a way that looks like a professional scanned document is now seamless. In an upcoming column, I’ll talk about the integration with the new esignature tools as well as some of the advancements in the acceptance of esignatures around the world to make it closer to the new standard in professional industries.


Jeff Bennion is a solo practitioner at the Law Office of Jeff Bennion. He serves as a member of the Board of Directors of San Diego’s plaintiffs’ trial lawyers association, Consumer Attorneys of San Diego. He is also the Education Chair and Executive Committee member of the State Bar of California’s Law Practice Management and Technology section. He is a member of the Advisory Council and instructor at UCSD’s Litigation Technology Management program. His opinions are his own. Follow him on Twitter here or on Facebook here, or contact him by email at jeff@trial.technology.

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