Benable — create shareable lists of things you recommend!

E.g., products you love, local businesses, travel recs - you can add anything to a Benable list!

Discover

I Finally Found Apps and Gear That Digitize Every Drawing on My Phone

30 items

Lucy Pearl

Stacks of drawings piling up in cabinets, closets, and under the bed. Sound familiar? If you're an artist, parent of a kid who draws constantly, or someone sitting on years of sketchbooks you can't bear to throw away, this is the setup I use to scan,...

Sections

Document and Photo Scanners That Actually Capture Detail

Lighting Setups That Kill Shadows and Glare on Art

Tablets and Devices for Storing and Viewing Digital Art

Storage Solutions for Backing Up Hundreds of Scans

Art Organization Supplies for Pre-Scan Sorting

Accessories That Speed Up the Whole Scanning Workflow

Document and Photo Scanners That Actually Capture Detail

Flat drawings with fine pencil lines were impossible to capture with my phone camera alone. Shadows, glare, uneven lighting. These scanners changed everything and I stopped losing detail on delicate work.

Grab this if you're scanning pencil sketches or watercolors with subtle gradients. Before I got it, phone photos washed out every light line. Now even my faintest graphite marks show up perfectly.

Epson Perfection V39 II Flatbed Scanner, 4800 dpi

Keep this on your desk if space is tight. It's thinner than most textbooks. I went from hauling out a clunky old scanner to just flipping this open between projects. Scans in about eight seconds flat.

Canon CanoScan LiDE 400 Flatbed Scanner

Bring this to art class or a coffee shop. My friend teaches figure drawing and carries it in her tote bag. She scans student work right after class instead of lugging portfolios home.

Epson, Portable Sheet-fed Document Scanner

Use this for smaller drawings on standard paper. It feeds sheets through automatically, so when I had 200 loose sketches from last year's inktober challenge, I powered through them in one afternoon.

Brother, Portable Document Scanner, Up to 8.5" x 14", White

Switch to this if you want wireless scanning straight to your phone. I used to trip over USB cables constantly. Now it sends files over Wi-Fi and I sort them from the couch while watching TV.

Ricoh ScanSnap iX1300 Compact Wireless or USB Double

Lighting Setups That Kill Shadows and Glare on Art

Before I fixed my lighting, every scan or photo had a weird shadow cutting across the middle. These solved the problem and my digitized drawings finally look like the originals.

Pair this with your scanner area for consistent light. I was getting yellowish scans under my old lamp and couldn't figure out why. This one puts out clean, balanced light that doesn't distort colors.

OttLite Gleam LED Desk Lamp with Wireless Charging

Try this if your desk setup doubles as your scanning station. The USB port charges my phone while I work, and the adjustable brightness means I can match lighting to whatever medium I'm scanning.

Realspace™ Kessly LED Desk Lamp With USB Port

Use this when you're photographing larger pieces that don't fit a flatbed scanner. I clamped mine above my kitchen table and got shadow-free shots of a 24x36 charcoal piece. No more driving to a copy shop.

EOTO LIGHT 21" LED Ring Light with Tripod Stand

Snag this for a budget-friendly option that still throws even light. My daughter uses it over her homework desk and we scan her drawings under it every week. Warm and cool modes both work great.

Globe Electric LED Desk Lamps with Adjustable Lighting

Toss these on either side of your scanning area to eliminate shadows completely. I mounted them with command strips. Before that, every large watercolor had a dark band down the center from overhead-only light.

Seller StoreFront - Sunco

Tablets and Devices for Storing and Viewing Digital Art

Scanning hundreds of drawings means nothing if you can't actually browse them easily. I wanted something where I could flip through my whole archive like a real portfolio without squinting at my phone screen.

Get this if you want a dedicated art-browsing device without spending laptop money. I loaded all 500 scans into folders by year and medium. Flipping through them on this screen feels like a real portfolio review.

Galaxy Tab A9+ (Wifi, Student Package) Graphite 128 GB

Pair this with the Files app and you've got a searchable art cabinet in your hands. My partner got tired of me spreading drawings across the dining table. Now I just hand them the iPad.

Customer reviews for 2022 Apple 10.9-inch iPad Wi-Fi

Try this as a budget viewer if you don't need Apple's ecosystem. I keep one on the coffee table loaded with my kid's artwork from kindergarten through fifth grade. Grandparents scroll through it every visit.

VidaMount On-Wall Tablet Mount

Use this if you want crisp color accuracy without paying premium prices. When I compared my watercolor scans side-by-side with originals, the colors on this screen were closer than my laptop's display.

Charger-compatible-with-tablet-M10-plus-3rd-gen

Grab this if you also want to sketch directly on the tablet after scanning your traditional work. Comes with an S Pen. I started redrawing over my scanned pencil sketches digitally and it opened up a whole new workflow.

Samsung Galaxy Tab S6 Lite 10.4" 128GB (2024 Model

Storage Solutions for Backing Up Hundreds of Scans

Lost an entire folder of scans once when my laptop crashed. Never again. Now I back everything up in three places and it takes almost no effort.

Keep one of these in your desk drawer as a dead-simple backup. I copy my scan folders onto it every month. When my computer died last March, I had everything on this little stick and nearly cried with relief.

SanDisk 256GB Ultra® USB 3.0 Flash Drive

Swap to this if your collection is getting massive. I've got five years of scanned artwork plus reference photos and I'm still not halfway through the storage. Transfers are wildly fast too.

Portable SSD T7 1TB (Indigo Blue) | MU-PC1T0H/WW

Toss your entire archive onto this and stash it somewhere safe. For the price, you get more storage than you'll probably ever need. I bought one for home and one for my studio.

WD 2TB Elements Portable External Hard Drive - USB 3.0

Use this to expand your tablet's storage directly. Popped one into my Samsung tablet and suddenly had room for thousands of high-res scans without deleting anything. Five minutes to set up.

SanDisk Ultra microSDHC 128GB 120MB/s Memory Card

Get this if you want automatic backup software included. Plug it in, set the folder, and it syncs on its own. I forgot it was even running until I checked and realized three months of scans were already backed up.

Seagate One Touch SSD 1TB External SSD Portable

Art Organization Supplies for Pre-Scan Sorting

Dumping 500 loose drawings onto a scanner with no system is a recipe for chaos. I learned that the hard way when I scanned 80 pieces and couldn't tell which year or project any of them belonged to.

Sort your drawings by project or date before you start scanning. I labeled each folder with a Sharpie and worked through them one batch at a time. Went from overwhelmed to done in three weekends.

Pendaflex® File Folders, Letter Size, Manila

Stick these on sketchbook pages you want to scan so you're not flipping through 200 pages hunting for the good ones. Saved me probably two hours on my last sketchbook alone.

Avery Margin Ultra Tabs, 2.5" x 1"

Slap a note on each drawing with the title and date before scanning. When I imported everything to my tablet, I could actually label files correctly instead of ending up with 300 images called ‘scan_001.’

Post-it® Super Sticky Notes, 3 x 3

Use this for labeling storage folders and external drives. I printed tiny labels for each backup drive so I know which years are on which device. Sounds obsessive but future-me will be grateful.

Itari Bluetooth Thermal Shipping Label Printer

Toss your originals into these after scanning if you can't bring yourself to part with the paper copies. Stack them in a closet and forget about them. Way better than the loose pile situation I had going.

Bankers Box Basic Duty Letter/Legal File Storage

Accessories That Speed Up the Whole Scanning Workflow

The actual scanning is only part of it. Connecting devices, charging while working, keeping cables untangled. These small additions cut my scanning sessions from three hours to about one.

Grab a longer cable so your scanner can sit at a comfortable distance. I kept pulling my laptop to the edge of the desk with a short cable and nearly knocked it off twice. Six feet of slack fixed that.

Anker, Nylon USB C to USB C Cable, 3.3 ft, 60W, Black

Plug your scanner, external drive, and phone into one hub. Before this I was constantly swapping cables in and out of my laptop's single USB port. Now everything stays connected at once.

Anker, USB Hub, 4-Port, Ultra-Slim Splitter, 2 ft Cable

Stick this on the back of your phone if you're using a scanning app. Holding your phone perfectly steady over a drawing for the hundredth time makes your hand cramp. This grip made a real difference in stability.

PopSockets

Wipe your scanner glass before every session. I skipped this once and ended up with a tiny smudge duplicated across 40 scans. Had to redo the whole batch. Took two minutes of cleaning to prevent hours of frustration.

MagicFiber Microfiber Cleaning Cloths

Toss one in your bag if you bounce between older scanners and newer laptops. My scanner has USB-A but my laptop only has USB-C. This tiny adapter saved me from buying a whole new cable.

Cable Matters USB Type-C to Type-B 3.1 Cable