# Physical books and printouts

> Point a camera at a printed page and read it into the same system as everything else.

Source: https://cognipage.io/docs/hardcopy

Point any webcam at a printed page and CogniPage reads along with you, so paperbacks and textbooks feed the same flashcards, assessments, recall schedule and knowledge map as everything on your screen.

**Where** Materials → Add material → open it → scan

## Setting up

1. **Create a material for the book**
   In **Materials**, press *Add material* and name it as you would want to find it later — *"Atomic Habits — Ch. 3"* is better than *"book"*.
2. **Open the scanner and allow the camera**
   Your operating system asks for camera permission the first time. The camera is active only while the scanner is open.
3. **Frame the page**
   A legibility meter under the preview scores the current frame and tells you what to fix — move closer, hold steadier, get more light. Wait for it to read well before capturing.
4. **Choose how to capture**
   **Automatic** captures each new page as you read and turn, skipping pages it has already seen. **Snap** takes one page per press, for when you only want a passage.
5. **Read**
   Captured pages appear in the panel beside the preview and land in the material as segments. Close the scanner when you are done — the camera stops with it.

## Getting a good read

**Light it evenly**

Diffuse light beats a bright lamp: glare on glossy paper is the most common cause of a poor read.

**Fill the frame**

One page, roughly filling the preview. Two pages at once halves the resolution on each.

**Keep it flat and square**

Hold the spine open. A steep angle bends the lines of text and confuses recognition.

**Prop the camera**

A stand or a stack of books beats holding a laptop. The meter is unforgiving about motion blur.

## What happens to a scanned page

Recognition runs on your device. The text is kept and appended to the material; the image is discarded. From there a hard-copy material behaves exactly like any other — it can be turned into flashcards, quizzed, and it appears in your analytics, marked with a *Hard copy* badge so you can tell where it came from.

> **No photo of any page is ever stored.**
>
> The frame is read for text and thrown away — nothing is written to disk, and nothing is transmitted. This feature is entirely optional and entirely manual: it runs only while you have the scanner open.