Scan old printed photos easily with Google's PhotoScan app
Mobile Apps
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Don't let your old printed photos collect dust in a shoebox.
Give them new digital life with Google's photo scan app.
It's free on iOS and Android and it's an easy way to preserve printed memories.
You don't even need to take the photo out of the picture frame or photo album.
With the PhotoScan app, hover over your print.
Make sure it's centered on the screen and snap a picture.
Next the app needs you to align the center circle over four dots.
You'll want to hover until the circle turns blue and disappears.
During this process.
it's actually taking multiple pictures and stitching all the data together, eliminating any parts that are bright white with glare from the light.
It then automatically processes the image, cropping out the table or frame around it.
You can adjust the corners if it's a little off.
The size of the print doesn't matter.
This will scan extra large photos and tiny wallet prints just fine.
Keep in mind, this isn't gonna be as perfect as using a high end flat bed scanner.
But, hey, it's free and quick to use.
The coloring may be off depending on the lighting in the room.
I found my skin looks slightly washed out.
But you can boost the color in the Google Photos app.
When you're ready to save, tap the corner arrow, and then tap save all.
The photos are now in your camera roll and also synced with Google Photos, which is a free way to back up your phone's pictures to the Cloud Then open the Google Photos app if you want to do some editing.
You can tap the pencil and then the middle icon to adjust settings.
Expand the light option to fine tune things like contrast, highlights and shadows.
Expanding the color menu gives you options to boost saturation or simply single out the saturation of one thing like skin tone.
If there's sky or ocean in the picture you can just boost the saturation of the deep blues in the shot.
Once you save your changes you can click the share icon to send to anyone in your contacts list they'll get link to save the photo even if they don't have the app.
PhotoScan is a handy app to capture photos when you're going through pictures at a relative's home.
And using it can certainly boost your Throwback Thursday game.
You've seen it, I'm Bridget Carey.
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