How to Scan Old Printed Photos

Photographs keep us connected to some of the best memories of our life. You might have prepared several albums right from your childhood with photographs of your school days, college memories and fun moments with friends and family. But today we are more connected to the digital world and the hard copies of photographs have lost their grace with time. So, before they get destroyed, why not to scan those old photos and create digital copies of your life memories. These scanned photos can be saved easily on device memory; you can share them with friends or can also add new effects to them to bring back the lost grace. This is definitely a cool idea.

You must be curious to know about tools that can help you to repair, retouch and restore your old memories. Spare few minutes to go through the article below, here you will find the best solution to scan old printed photos:

2 Ways to Scan Old Printed Photos:

1. Use Scanners to get the highest quality

The process of scanning printed copies of photos becomes quite easier with the scanners and it can help you to achieve the finest quality. Set up your scanning station, remove the dust particles from your printed photograph, it can be done either using alcohol-based cleaning wipe or with the help of microfiber cloth. Also, clean the scanner to achieve dust free restoration. Now start scanning your photos event by event or date by date so that you can organize them easily in your device memory. You can use a resolution setting 300-dots/inch for simple restoration whereas 600 dpi is required for further enlargements.

2. Use your phone to scan old photos:

You will be happy to hear that it is also possible to scan old photographs using smartphones as well. So, if you cannot invest on a scanner, simple download PhotoScan application on your iOS or Android device. In order to avail best results, prefer to use a smartphone with high-quality cameras such as iPhone 7, Galaxy S7 or Pixel. This Google application makes use of latest technologies to adjust the overhead lighting and glare for scanned images. All that you need to do is, dust off your old photos, clean the device camera, go to the natural light if a well-lit area and scan your photos. Crop the image, add required details and upload it to your account.

Best Scanner Apps for Photos:

1. Google PhotoScan

Compatibility: iOS, Android.

Price: Free

Google’s PhotoScan app is one of the top rated, image scanning tools in the market. It can capture multiple shots of your images so that glares can be removed and scan can achieve the highest quality. This app has the ability to detect edges, can bring smart rotation, and also corrects perspective to achieve best details. Tests show that this app ensures best results for glare removal. The great news is that this app also allows your free storage on the cloud so you can keep your scanned memories safe for free.

2. Photo Scanner by Photomyne:

Compatibility: Android, iOS

Price: Free for Android, in-app purchases for iOS.

Photomyne is another creative solution for scanning old memories. The best feature of this app is that it can scan multiple photos at once. Simply put all your photos on a table and get them scanned instantly using Photomyne. This app can automatically separate the photos and save them individually into albums. Although it can detect all images very well from your multiple collections but the edge detection technology is little poor on this platform; however, users can fix this issue later by detecting edges manually. It is also possible to enhance image quality by using special filters.

3. Shoebox:

Compatibility: iOS, Android

Price: Free

Ancenstry.com has recently launched this intuitive application to assist users with fast photo scanning abilities. It works with advanced edge detection technologies in combination with the perspective correction methods that provide pretty good results for every scan. It is also possible to enter additional details like date, caption, location and tags to scanned images. These photos can be directly saved to device gallery or you can also add them to your family tree in Ancestry.com. This app provides unlimited free storage so that users can manage an easy collection of all memories.

4. Microsoft Office Lens:

Compatibility: iOS and Android

Price: Free

Office lens is capable enough to make your old documents readable online . Most people prefer to use this app to convert images into PDF files, PowerPoint or Word files. The output files can be easily saved to OneNote, Local device, and OneDrive as well. It can also be used to capture old memories, school days, college hangouts etc and the scanned files can be saved to documents folder with ease. Students will also find this application useful for scanning class notes and manage a digital copy of them for easy access on the go.

5. CamScanner:

Compatibility: iOS and Android

Price: Free/ Premium subscription starts at $4.99/month

CamScanner is popular as the best document scanner among mobile users but the great news is that it can also scan your old images with ease. The advanced editing options of this scanner allow users to get best out of all scanned images. Many people also use CamScanner to scan letter, old documents, and many other things. Some special features of this app include easy sync with different platforms, better scan quality and ability to save all scans to cloud storage. Even the free version can also provide you easy access to many useful features.

6. Fast Scanner:

Compatibility: iOS and Android

Price: Free

FastScanner can help you to scan your old images instantly and save them in form of PDF files or JPEG files. The great news is that you can create multiple page PDFs with this app and save them to your device for easy access via other apps at a later stage. Users can also send scanned images to friends via email by simply hitting the send button on the screen. The saved images can be later printed using CloudPrint or other printing apps. Tests reveal that this app works extremely fast and scan several documents within few seconds to make your task easier.

7. Turbo Scan:

Compatibility: iOS and Android

Price: $5.99

Millions of users have tried this app till now and they are happy with the high-quality results of this powerful multipage scanner app. It can save a copy of your receipts, documents, notes, whiteboards, and photos as well. Turbo Scan saves all captured documents in form of JPEG and PDF files. The best feature of this interactive interface is its ability to provide fine results in low lights. Once you have scanned your images, you can save them to the device or can also send them via email. It is possible to adjust rotation, brightness and color controls with one tap operations.

8. Pic Scanner:

Compatibility: iOS

Price: Free/ Gold Version at $4.99

PicScanner has the ability to scan multiple photos in one go. It can detect edges with ease, crop them and save your images to memory automatically. All scans produced by this app look pretty good and users can also implement additional operations such as add captions, effects, trim, rotate or enhance. All its features are useful but the only trouble is that with the free version you can share or save maximum 12 images only. In order to save unlimited scans and to export them to other devices; prefer to go for the full version of the app by making payment of $2.99 only.

9. Unfade:

Compatibility: iOS

Price: $6.99

This latest app allows iPhone users to scan their old memories and restore them with a vibrant and color-rich look. All that you need to do is, simply put camera towards your old image and let this app do rest of the magical procedures itself. The magic color filter will handle all the requirements with ease. Even faded colors will appear back on your old scanned photos with this super easy app. Other than this, Unfade is loaded with a variety of editing tools, sharing tools and image presentation abilities. Once the selected images are digitized, they can be sort into different albums for easy access at a later stage.

10. Tiny Scanner:

Compatibility: iOS and Android

Price: Free

This app can convert smartphone camera into a tiny document scanner and can save everything in PDF file format. This app can scan several documents, receipts, photos, and reports for you. Once you are ready with your scan results, you can share them via email, or directly move them to Dropbox, Google Drive, Evernote or OneDrive. This app works effectively for adjustments of photo contrast and you can optimize every scanned file instantly to get best results. Users can also protect their scanned documents via passcode.

The Bottom Line:

If you are really curious to restore your old memories and share them with friends to refresh the golden moments of life, it is good to download a suitable application on your smartphone and start scanning your photographs right now. Most of these trustworthy apps are available for free and offer a variety of editing features; you can expect best results with minimum efforts.

Special Note: Here we recommend a helpful slideshow maker tool. It could turn your photos and videos into appealing slideshow. Welome to pay a visit to Wondershare's official website https://photo.wondershare.com/slideshow-maker.html