READING QUALITY
How to give Roby what it needs to read well
Roby reads very well what it can see clearly. Almost every reading mistake comes from one thing: the image it was given. Here is how to give it the best one.
FIRST
Does your file already contain real text?
Open it and try to select a sentence with your mouse. That one gesture decides everything else on this page.
✅ You can highlight it
The text is genuinely inside the file. Roby takes it exactly as written, letter for letter. No camera, nothing that can go wrong. This is always the best option — a Word file, a plain text file, or a PDF exported from a computer.
📷 Your cursor just draws a box
What you have is a photograph inside a file. Even if its name ends in .pdf, inside it is an image — so everything below applies to it in full. A scanned contract is a photograph.
IF IT IS ON PAPER
Best to worst
- A file whose text you can selectNothing can go wrong. Skip the camera entirely.
- A scanner, if you have oneEven light, no angle, no shadow, no shaky hand. Most people forget they own one.
- Your phone camera — uploaded from that same phoneClose up, with the page filling the picture.
- A photo that travelled through a chat appThis is the one that produced a contract that does not exist. See below.
Do not let the photo travel
Messaging apps shrink photos to make them lighter, and that shrinking erases exactly what Roby needs to tell a 6 from an 8, or a comma from a full stop. Take the photo and upload it from the same phone. Do not send it to yourself through a chat first. This matters more than the size of the letters.
Get close enough to fill the screen
The sheet should fill the whole picture. Get as close as you can while the entire page still fits in the frame. Every centimetre of table in the photo is resolution Roby does not have for your document.
Mind the smallest letters
We recommend not asking Roby to read letters smaller than about 7 points — roughly the fine print at the foot of an invoice. The check needs no ruler: take the photo, zoom in on your own phone, and if you cannot read the smallest line comfortably, Roby cannot either. If one section is much smaller than the rest, photograph that section on its own, up close, as an extra page.
WHAT HAPPENS WHEN THE PHOTO IS NOT GOOD ENOUGH
It does not come back broken. It comes back wrong.
Roby does not return unreadable text. It returns something that reads perfectly well and does not say what your document says. Here is one printed sheet, photographed two ways:
| How the photo was taken | Tenant Roby read | Rent Roby read |
|---|---|---|
| ✅ Close up, uploaded from the phone | Textiles Andinos del Ecuador S.A. | $2.732,39 |
| 🚫 The same sheet, sent through WhatsApp first | Pancho Andrés & Escobar S.A. | $1.751,29 |
The second row is not a reading mistake. It is a contract that does not exist — a company that was never a party, an amount nobody agreed to — written confidently, with nothing on screen to warn you. That is why it is worth taking the photo properly the first time.
HOW TO CHECK
Every answer shows you the page it came from
Under each answer Roby gives, you will see the pages it used. Press one and the full page image opens, so you can compare what Roby said against what your document actually says.
Roby does not tell you when it is unsure. That is exactly why we keep the image of every page and show you the source of every answer — so the original is always one press away. Check any figure you are going to rely on: amounts, dates, names and identification numbers.
What we have not measured yet
This page only states what we tested: how much the letters can shrink, and what happens when a photo is compressed by a chat app. We have not yet measured glare, poor lighting, photos taken at an angle, motion blur or creased paper. When we do, this page will say so. We would rather leave a gap here than guess.