Scanning Recipes

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1. Scanned photo Scanning a Recipe
2. Ingredients Editing a Scanned Recipe
3. Directions Editing a Scanned Recipe
4. Save button Editing a Scanned Recipe

Paprika can turn photos of recipes into structured recipes in your collection. Take a photo of a cookbook page, a magazine clipping, or a handwritten recipe card, and Paprika will read the text and sort it into the appropriate recipe fields for you.

Scanning needs Premium and a Paprika account, and its use is limited. If you're not logged in, Paprika asks you to sign up or log in, then carries on with your scan.

Scanning a Recipe Premium

From the recipes list, press the button to add a new recipe, then select Scan From Camera to photograph the recipe with your device's camera, or Scan From Photo to choose an existing image with the system photo picker. You can also paste a photo you have copied to the clipboard.

The photo fills the screen, with a strip of thumbnails for your photos and a toolbar along the bottom:

• Add Photo - Adds another photo from the Photo Library, the Camera, or the Clipboard. A recipe can span multiple photos — for example, a page of ingredients and a page of directions — and Paprika will combine them into one recipe.
• Crop and Rotate - Opens the photo for cropping, so that only the recipe text is included. Use Rotate Left and Rotate Right to turn it, then press Done.
• Edit (pencil) - Shows or hides the recipe form.
• Scan - Reads the photo on screen.

Tap a thumbnail to show that photo. Press Scan on each photo you would like to read.

Editing a Scanned Recipe

After a scan, the recognized text is sorted into the recipe's fields — name, ingredients, directions, and so on — and the recipe form opens beside the photo, so you can compare the two. On a phone, the form opens over the bottom half of the screen. Drag the form to scroll it, or drag the handle at its top to make it taller or shorter. On a tablet, the form sits under the photo when the tablet is upright, and beside it when the tablet is sideways.

When you scan another page, Paprika asks what to do with the text already in the form. Choose Add to Recipe to fill the fields that are still empty and add to the end of longer fields like the ingredients and directions, or Replace Text to put the new scan in its place. To start over, press Reset in the form; the photos are kept.

Correct anything the scan missed, and press Save in the form to add the recipe to your collection. To leave without saving, press the button in the upper left corner.

Scanning a Recipe's Photo Premium

To scan a photo that's already in one of your recipes:

1. Open the recipe and tap its photo to open the gallery.
2. Swipe to the photo you want, then tap and choose Scan Text. The scan starts right away.
3. If the recipe already has text, choose Add to Recipe to add the scan to it, or Replace Text to put the scan in its place.
4. Check the result and tap Save to save the recipe.

To leave the recipe as it was, tap instead and choose Discard. Scan Text is available once the photo has downloaded.

Scanning Tips

• For best scan quality, pick a high-resolution image with clear, readable text.
• When photographing a page, make sure it is evenly lit and the text isn't distorted by the curve of the page.
• Crop out surrounding text (like other recipes on the same page) so only one recipe is scanned at a time.