In today’s age of paperless transactions, it’s a bit of a surprise when we find that there are times when we need to deal with actual paper. Shocking. Official documents like bills, receipts and the like are still being printed on paper, and they’re bound to need scanning at some point, especially if you deal with old fashioned operations like banks. However all is not lost, because you can now use your smartphone camera and a cool app to act like a proper desktop scanner, and it works brilliantly.

CamScanner, available for both iOS and Android, lets you use your phone’s camera to take a photo of a document and instantly convert it into a PDF file. You can then send the file by email or store it at CamScanner’s website when you register for a free account. Third party cloud storage like Box, Google Drive and Dropbox are also supported.

The app has been updated with a more modern interface since it launched, but it remains easy to use. Just open the app, take a photo of the document, adjust where you want to crop the edges, choose the look you want and you’re good to go. The app will also automatically improve the legibility and brightness of the document so it looks great before you choose to save.

The results are really very impressive, and in addition to converting a scanned photo into PDF, you can add annotations, although the feature is limited to 30 pages for the free version. The free version is ad-supported and adds a watermark with your file, but you can upgrade to a premium version for $4.99 to take those off.