IMPORTANT: the iPhone 3G is not able to take clear pictures of small text at close range. A close-up lens accessory is required to use ScanBizCards with the iPhone 3G, such as the Griffin Clarifi Case

Have the relevant text fill as much of the camera frame as possible, so that the text is larger in the image and easier to recognize. You don't need to include graphical elements in the picture since these will not be recognized as text anyway.

Try to take pictures with excellent lighting. Natural light is best.

Avoid casting shadows at all cost! This may not be easy if the light source is behind or above you, in which case try to move the card a bit sideways.

Avoid reflections: if reflections are unavoidable, try to move the phone so that reflexions hit empty areas on the card.

Steady your hand: at close range, any slight movement will cause bluriness. Try to have your elbows resting on a table or lean against something. The best way to take a picture of a business card is lying on a flat surface (unless of course the light source is straight overhead, in which case holding the card at a 45 degree angle in front of you works best).

Make sure the focus is right: the iPhone camera will try to automatically focus on the card but often misses. Touching the blue square in the middle of the camera view will help ensure best focus.

If you feel we missed an element altogether, it may help to rescan the card while cropping the image around just that element.

If you feel we failed to scan a card image taken in good conditions, please email it to us! We will keep the information on the card strictly confidential of course.

Please take a look at the sample cards included within the application as examples of decent biz card images. From the startup screen, touch "Select Existing Photo" and look for the "Sample Images" folder.

Additional sample cards can be found online at our biz cards gallery for example of good photos as well as ones requiring some user intervention and cases where scanning will fail.

NOTE:Sending a card image from one iPhone to another from the Photos application is NOT a good way to get that image scanned, because the iPhone reduces the size of the image to 800x600 when emailing out and this degrades scanning quality. To forward images from the Camera Roll or Saved Images without loosing quality, do this:

• Make sure ScanBizCards is installed on the source iPhone (Lite version is fine)
• Set "Send Full Image" to ON in the ScanBizCards settings (we too send a reduced image by default, this setting overrides this default)
• Select the image within ScanBizCards from Camera Roll. Note: if the image is in a photo folder other than the Camera Roll, please set "Show Photo Albums" in the ScanBizCards settings.
• When the scan screen is shown, no need to scan the image, just touch "Save For Later"
• Touch the actions button (bottom-left), select "Send To Friend", email the image to yourself
• On the target iPhone, open that email, touch the image and save it
• Running ScanBizCards on the target iPhone, you will now be able to find the image in "Camera Roll" (or "Saved Images" on the iPod)