Ampad Shotnote Review

Ampad Shot Note is an app and paper combination that tries to make it easy to organize and search for notes. It sure beats saving notes to the camera roll and it can be a real useful tool for a student who still prefers to take notes on paper.

Ampad Shot Note is a free app available in the app store and is supposed to be used in conjunction with Ampad’s special Shot Note pads of paper. The pads of paper are just like normal pads, except they have QR code like markers in the corners. These markers help the app align, capture, and center the notes. The app’s ability to remove backgrounds, and correct for different angles and lighting, is its main feature. It makes it so even if the picture isn’t shot very well, the note will still look good on the iPhone.

The pads of paper come in all different shapes and sizes. Some have lines, others are graph paper, and some are just blank. When I looked around they were in the $5 to $10 range, but prices vary.

Notes can be shared to the camera roll, Evernote, DropBox, Twitter, and via email. I can see Evernote and DropBox really enhancing Shot Note’s abilities. Evernote is great for organizing and DropBox is used by many people for backups.

Although Shot Note does some photo processing automatically to center notes, the app includes a few image correction features, like brightness and contrast. There aren’t many editing options, but that’s not really the point of the app. Thankfully, there is also an undo button to undo any modifications.

Anyone who uses this app and wants to have good results needs to put in the effort of taking good pictures, typing in appropriate titles, adding informative descriptions, and adding relevant tags. The search will find notes only if the metadata is there.

My conclusion about Ampad Shot Note is that if anyone who is buying a notepad and might want to digitize and organize them with an iPhone should consider it. The app isn’t for editing and doing photo correction, but it does make it really easy to categorize and search notes. It’s not the most powerful app out there, but the integration with services such as Evernote and DropBox expands upon it’s potential.