While the iOS App Store success coined the phrase “There’s an app for that,” Apple couldn’t have done it alone. The ingenuity and creativity of third-party developers is a very big reason the iOS platform has grown, and companies like Readdle have been pioneers almost longer than anyone with inventive apps such as Scanner Pro.

Readdle has announced the release of Scanner Pro 4.0, a major update to the company’s portable scanning app. While users can always snap a quick photo of a document to call up when needed, Scanner Pro offers extensive features such as automatic edge detection for creating PDF files that match the original page size, along with a variety of options for sharing them.

The company offered us an early peek at Scanner Pro 4.0, which is now a universal app for native support on the iPad as well as iPhone/iPod touch. While the new iPad is recommended for getting the best results thanks to its five-megapixel camera, the app is also compatible with the iPad 2 and features a slick new user interface optimized for the larger, Retina Display screen.

Scanner Pro 4.0 opens as a blank canvas -- a Settings button at top left opens a pop-up for adding your account information for Evernote, Dropbox, Google Docs or a WebDAV server, any or all of which you can choose to upload newly scanned documents to. The app also becomes a Wi-Fi hard drive when opened for transferring documents to and from a Mac or PC, but this can be disabled from Settings as well.

Before you start scanning, be sure to check the Default Page Size setting -- it’s set for European A4 by default since Readdle is based in Ukraine, but users in the U.S. will likely want the more standard Letter size instead. If you want to compress your scanned PDF documents to save on storage space, tick the slider. Last but not least, users can also establish a passcode lock to keep their scanned documents safe from prying eyes.

With setup out of the way, choose from one of two icons at the bottom of the screen -- camera mode for scanning new paper documents, or you can open an existing file from your photo albums.

Camera mode is where Scanner Pro 4.0 really shines. By default, the large display on the iPad features a grid overlay to help line up your document, but this can be disabled by tapping the option at lower right. When you’re ready to scan, tap the Camera icon and hold the iPad steady as the app does its magic.

Now you’ll have the opportunity to adjust the document borders by grabbing the handles at each edge and moving them into place. The app does a great job of this automatically, but tapping “Find Borders” will also do the trick. If you need to adjust the page size before saving, tap the button with the current size and make a selection. Tap the Done button when finished.

While most documents will “scan” just fine, Scanner Pro 4.0 gives you the choice of choosing how you want to save the document: Photo, Document or Grayscale. You can also rotate to correct vertical documents which may have been scanned horizontally to match the iPad screen, as well as contrast and brightness to make the document more readable.

Your new document is now ready to share with the world, and Readdle has left no stone unturned here. Tap the Share arrow in the upper right corner and documents can be shared via email, Photos (Camera Roll), Print, Upload To, Open In as well as password-protected and even sent by Fax for an additional in-app fee of 99 cents each.

New documents can be uploaded to any of the four services where you entered your credentials in Settings -- Dropbox, Google Docs, Evernote or WebDAV. Pages can also be opened as either JPEG or PDF in other iPad apps.

After you close out of your document and return to the main screen (which now shows a thumbnail of your scanned document), you’ll be presented with the option to rename it to something more descriptive.

Scans can be sorted by Name or Date, and once you have a lot of them, a Search icon can be used to find one in a snap (although it only searches the document name, not its contents). Last but not least, Scanner Pro 4.0 can keep your documents organized by folder for those of us who prefer the maximum in organization.

Despite all of these great new features for iPad users, Readdle has made Scanner Pro 4.0 a free update for existing iPhone customers, and the one-time price of $6.99 gets the same app for new users. Scanner Pro 4.0 hit the App Store on Tuesday morning and the 20.6MB download is compatible with all devices running iOS 4.3 or later.

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