You simply take four photos of the physical photograph and four white dots will appear above the printed photo. The app uses machine learning to remove glares, crop out the desk or wall behind the printed photo, and make sure the colors are accurate so that you get a perfect scan. While the user interface is simple enough for anyone to use, there’s a great deal going on in the background. PhotoScan is an app that lets you take a picture of a physical, old photo. Julian Chokkattu/Digital TrendsGoogle is making it easy to digitize and share old photos with a new app called PhotoScan - just in time to embarrass you for the holidays. You can also watch an introductory video below. – Smart rotation, so your photos stay right-side-up no matter which way you scan themĪnother key element to the app is its integration with the aforementioned Google Photos – you can back up your scans for free using the app which will organize and make the scans searchable based on smart algorithms that can figure out what’s in the photo.ĭownload PhotoScan from the App Store for free now. – Straight, rectangular scans with perspective correction – Automatic cropping based on edge detection – Get glare-free scans with an easy step-by-step capture flow Of course, it’s not too difficult to keep a record or share old photos simply by using the iPhone’s camera to take a photo of them – so what does PhotoScan do that’s better than that? Here’s the key features: The idea is to turn your old physical photo collections into digital assets to store and view on devices. We featured it in our best apps to enhance Live Photos roundup here.Īnd now, it appears that Google has done it again with PhotoScan. Then later last year Google released Motion Stills – which directly addressed some of the key issues Apple had with Live Photos, adding image stablization and a gallery where you could watch and share Live Photos easily. Google’s also released Allo, which demonstrated a Siri-rivaling virtual assistant (though without the integration Siri has, can anything be as good?) Read our review of that here. Last year we reviewed Google Photos and found its capability quite incredible – similar features eventually ended up in Apple’s stock Photos app, but Google’s might still have the edge. Hi! Thanks for reading. This post looks better in our award-winning app, Tips & Tricks for iPhone.ĭespite Google having its own competing mobile operating system in Android, it’s remarkable how prolific (and useful) its iOS app output is.

Google photoscan ios