Windows 8 App to Use Webcam as Scanner and Take Photos with Timer: HP Scan and Capture

HP Scan and Capture is a free app for Windows 8 that lets you use your webcam as a scanner. Using this app, you can take photo of any document with your webcam and save that as a PDF file. If you have a multi-page document, you can take separate photos of each page and then create a single multi-page PDF file for all the pages of the document.

In addition to scanning document, this app also lets you capture normal photos with your webcam. While taking normal photos, it provides a timer feature as well. You can set a three second timer so that photo is taken once the timer is over. This is a pretty good option so that you can set the timer and then move back to set a nice pose in front of your webcam, before it takes your photos.

HP Scan And Capture - Interface

Get HP Scan and Capture App for Windows 8:

You can get this app from Windows Store, or by using link given at the end of this review. The app is available in “Photo” category. The app is just around 1 MB in size!

How to Use HP Scan and Capture App for Windows 8:

Once you have installed this app, open it. The interface will look like the one in the screenshot above. There are two options that you get on the start screen: Capture Photos and Capture Documents. Let’s go through each of these options.

Capture Photos with Webcam on Windows 8:

To capture photos with your Windows 8 webcam, use the first option of “Capture Photos”. Make sure your webcam is connected to your PC. As soon as you click on this option, it will show a screen which will show image from your webcam.

HP Scan And Capture - Screen With Image

To capture the photo, just left click anywhere on the screen, and immediately the photo will be captured. This was a pretty simple thing. Let’s explore some more advanced and interesting features that it provides:

Capture photo with timer: If you want to capture a photo with timer, click on “Timer” option that  is available at the bottom of the screen. The Timer button will become White, but nothing else will happen on the screen. Don’t worry. To start the timer, just click anywhere on the screen. It will start a countdown timer of 3 seconds. When three seconds will be over, the photo will be taken.

HP Scan And Capture - Timer Feature

Adjust Brightness and Contrast of Photo: Another interesting option in this app is that it lets you adjust brightness and contrast of the photo and shows you live preview of the photo, before you even take it. This lets you easily adjust brightness and contrast to get the perfect photo.

HP Scan And Capture - Contrast And Brightness Effects

To adjust brightness and contrast, click on “Camera Options” at bottom of the screen, and then click on “More”. The option is kinda hidden, but is a very useful setting. While here, you can also Flickr rate and change exposure between auto and manual.

HP Scan And Capture - Brightness And Contrast Setting

Crop Photo: As soon as you take a photo, you are given an option to crop it, so that you can keep only required size of the photo.

HP Scan And Capture - Crop Image

Once done, you can save the photo to your local PC.

Scan Documents with Webcam on Windows 8:

Next interesting part of the app is to scan documents with your webcam. For that, click on “Capture Documents” section on Home screen of the app. The interface that you see here will be exactly same as you saw in “Capture Photos” section, but the additional feature it has is that you can save captured document to PDF.

When you open this screen, use your webcam to take photo of any document. Here also you can use brightness and contrast features, as well as use timer. Once you are ready, just capture the photo of document.

HP Scan And Capture - Scan Document

Once you do that, it will show option to crop document to keep only its required part. Once done, it lets you save document in PDF format. If you scan more than one document, it will save all of them together as a multi-page PDF file.

HP Scan And Capture - Final Screen

Use Other HP Devices as well:

Another interesting feature of this software is that it can also detect other HP devices that are attached to the PC and use them for taking photos or scanning documents. I tested this app with a HP Printer + Scanner. It quickly detected that, and I was able to scan document from scanner by directly using this app. This is a pretty neat feature.

Also check out this Windows 8 app to Scan QR code with webcam.

My Opinion Of HP Scan and Capture

When I installed this app, I didn’t have lot of expectations, but this app thoroughly surprised me. The features that I liked most in this app are: option to capture photo with webcam using timer, live preview of brightness and contrast adjustment, and detection of other HP devices as well. Definitely a good app to have on your Windows 8 PC.

Get HP Scan and Capture here.