PhotoScan – Turn your Old Prints into High-quality Digital Images

Google says it wants to be the home for all your photos and it has expanded by including the old photos you took on a point-and-shoot camera back in the 90s. Google Photos years to be a single home for everybody’s photos.

With Google PhotoScan, a new app from Google, that is built to scan your prints, eliminate any glare that you get from taking a picture, and keep them all in a digital form, Google wants to help you to turn your printed photos into high-quality digital copies. That means the older photos clicked in the pre-smartphone era can also become a part of your Google Photos.

What does it do?

Google’s PhotoScan lets you scan a large number of photos using an offbeat, and in a game-like interface. According to the engineers at Google, PhotoScan will improve the old photo of a photo method that is quickly used to get a digital copy of your old prints.

Google PhotoScan wants to eliminate the problems that occur while scanning the photos using a flatbed scanner like the photos have a glare from the lights across the image, often they are not properly aligned, and not properly cropped, showing the surface they are placed on. PhotoScan stitches multiple scans of a picture together and produces a single image without the problems mentioned above.

How does PhotoScan Work?

While using PhotoScan, you are indicated to line up your picture within a border. After you are done aligning the picture in a border, press the scan button to activate your phone’s flash, and start the development of a high-quality representation of the photo.

In the process, four white circles will appear in different portions of the image. You’ll have to move your phone over each dot until it turns blue. When you move the phone to scan each dot, the app is various images of the picture from different angles to eliminate glare. After all the four dots are scanned, the app will put together the final image. The photos will be automatically cropped, rotated, and color corrected.

Your scans will be directly saved to your phone’s storage, and you can then upload them to Google Photos. PhotoScan is not only cheaper than getting the pictures scanned by a professional, but it is also much faster and more convenient than using a flatbed scanner.

Back it up with Google Photos

After the process of scanning the pictures, the scans will be directly saved to your phone’s storage, and you can then upload them to Google Photos. You can save the scans with just one tap. When you want to find them, you can simply type ‘’scans’’ in Google Photos and they will all come up.

Additions to Google Photos app

1. Apart from PhotoScan, there have also been some remarkable additions to the Google Photos app.
2. There is a host of new photo-editing options on board.
3. The auto-enhance feature on Google Photos tweaks brightness, contrast, saturation and other aspects.
4. Now it can also look at a photo and identify what the photo editor might try and improve.
5. The new version of auto-enhance uses exposure and saturation levels, new controls for light and color levels, and some new filters that go beyond your normal Instagram filters.
6. The auto-enhance has been a substantial feature, and now you can see it getting sharper.

You can Try it Now

Google’s machine-learning based on all the data in its system is unmatched. The PhotoScan app is free and went live a few days ago and is available for both Android and iOS. The Google Photos updates will begin to rise soon.

Nisarg Shah

Nisarg is the Business Development Manager at Nimblechapps, a top mobile game development company and has been with the organisation since its inception in 2014. He likes to update his knowledge on changing trends in technology and marketing and pens his thoughts regarding the same on various blogs and LinkedIn.