Why are my scanned documents so large on iPhone now?

The size of scanned documents in the iOS Notes app can vary significantly depending on the content of the document being scanned. Factors such as the number of colors, images, text, fonts, and the overall complexity of the document influence its file size. For instance, documents with detailed images or high-resolution graphics will tend to result in larger file sizes compared to simple text-based documents. The presence of multiple fonts, varied formatting, and rich media elements also contributes to an increase in file size, making it more dependent on the specific contents being captured during the scan.

You can apparently also select the color base for the scan using the circles at the top. Black and white uses only two and is the smallest, then grayscale. Full color will need the most storage.

Apple support and I found the solution. When scanning into notes, and the camera opens, select the filters icon at the top to change the settings from color to black and white or greyscale. Greyscale worked very well in reducing a 75Mb scan to a 15Mb scan.

It took awhile to arrive at this solution and I asked the rep to put in a request for apple to release guidance on the topic. Hopefully they do.

I would like Apple to provide some ability for the user to adjust the resulting file size for scanning files. I made two scans of the same text-filled pages to produce black and white outputs; one using a regular desktop scanner and the other with my iphone. The scanner produces files that are roughly 1/10 to 1/20 the size of my iphone: 55kB vs 950kB.

I am not able to produce output files using the iphone that are as compact as the scanner, even though the quality of images are similar. In fact the scanner can produce noticably higher quality scans at similar file sizes.

The convenience of the iphone scan feature would be more useful if it did not come at the cost of using up 10x more disk space or cloud storage space.

Thank you

You can make a suggestion to Apple here -

Feedback - iPhone - Apple