Now, edit scanned documents with Adobe Document Cloud

Imagine scanning a document, using Photoshop to touch it up and then being able to edit the contents! Think of the paperwork it will reduce, if an auto-fill feature pops up, allowing you to fill up forms digitally, e-sign it, and share it in a matter of moments.

All that is possible thanks to the Adobe Document Cloud. After its creative cloud, where you can use Photoshop, Illustrator and other creative tools on the go, and the marketing cloud that allows you to use analytics, social, and advertising tools across screens, now the San Jose-headquartered tech company has unleashed a revolutionary way to work with documents.

With the Adobe Document Cloud, which has a spanking new version of the Acrobat DC as its centre piece, people will be able to create, review, approve, sign and track documents whether on a desktop or mobile device. In addition, there is a free e-signing solution tagged on to it. With this the PDF, which interestingly stands for Portable Document Format, actually lives up to its name!

Giving a demonstration of how the Document Cloud works, during the Adobe Summit in Salt Lake City, Bryan Lamkin, Senior Vice President of Technology and Corporate Development at Adobe, pointed out, "Eighty per cent of document-based processes are at least partly dependent on paper. While most forms of content (books, movies and music) have successfully made the move to digital, documents and the process of working with them have not, and that needs to change."

The new solutions from Adobe hope to change just that. So, as Lamkin demonstrated, he could whip out his phone, scan a consent form that his son had brought from school in order to get permission to go for a picnic,  upload it on to his tablet or laptop and then using the Photoshop magic, remove shadows and correct the boundaries and imperfections that may have occurred during scanning. After which, at the click of a button, the font recognition software on the Acrobat Reader kicks in and when Lamkin clicked on the document, he was able to edit it using same font. With the e-sign solution integrated to it, he could sign the consent form and mail it to the teacher at his son's school, saving himself a trip to the school.

"This will enhance productivity," Lamkin said.

But wouldn't the new solutions also raise the risk of important documents such as identity papers getting easily modified? Imagine how easy it would be to scan a passport and change a few details?

Lamkin said that there were adequate security safeguards and protection. For instance, a lock in feature prevents modification of scanned documents.

In all, the Adobe Document Cloud includes a new version of Acrobat DC, E-Signing Anywhere for Everyone (formerly known as Adobe Echosign), Mobile Link and companion mobile apps that enable easy scans through the phone camera and migration between devices.

The Adobe Document Cloud will be sold via a subscription model as well as a one-time purchase fee model.  Subscription rates for Acrobat are $14.99 a month for Pro and $12.99 for Standard, and upon subscribing customers will automatically receive the new Acrobat DC and the Document Cloud as soon as they are available in the market.

Adobe, which claims that 50 billion PDFs were opened in Adobe products alone last year, feels that governments could be a big consumer of the Documents Cloud and is this year targetting significant business growth from public sector.