How to choose a photo scanner app for iPhone or iPad
Photo scanner apps make it easy to digitize photos. You could scan a hundred photos in 15 minutes, right out of an album or shoe box.
If you have a pile of albums or shoe boxes full of long-forgotten photos, you really must consider digitizing them. There are a few good reasons for this:
- Photo prints deteriorate over time. They can turn yellow or develop color casts. Loose photos curl. Accidental damage or spills could ruin them forever.
- Printed photos cannot be shared readily. You may have some precious old pictures that others in your family might want, and they may have photos that you’d love to have.
- Digitizing preserves photos for posterity, and allows you to enjoy them in more ways, e.g. viewing as a slideshow on your iPad or TV, putting in a digital photo frame, etc.
Do you have albums or photos you’ve been meaning to digitize, but haven’t gotten down to because you don’t have the time, or a scanner, or the tech skills? Don’t worry, it’s easy. You could scan, crop and save a hundred photos in 15 minutes flat. No scanner or technical knowledge needed. All you’ll need is an iPhone or iPad, and a photo scanner app.
Scanning photos with iPhone or iPad
Using your iPhone (or iPad) as a photo scanner has many advantages over using a conventional desktop scanner:
- You already have that iPhone, and you already know how to take photos with it. Using it for scanning isn’t that different.
- Your phone’s always with you, so you can scan anywhere, e.g. if visiting a relative who has photos that you want, you can scan them in a jiffy.
- No need to drop $100–400 on a desktop scanner, and have another piece of hardware cluttering your home when you’re done scanning.
- Scanner apps are inexpensive and give good quality scans.
How to choose the right scanner app
At least a dozen photo scanner apps are listed on the iOS App Store. The factors to consider when choosing a scanner app include scan resolution, ease of use, speed, cropping accuracy, privacy, other features (like the ability to edit and enhance photos, organize them in albums, and easily export or share them), and — of course — pricing.
Scan resolution: All iOS scanner apps use the iPhone or iPad’s camera, typically either 12- or 48-megapixel. All apps save scans as JPG files — a “lossy” format that allows the image to be compressed to reduce file size. Some apps use more compression than the others, resulting in smaller-sized files but loss in image quality.
Ease of use: Every app involves a little getting used to. For example, with Google Photoscan you take four photos of every picture so that the app can select their best regions and stitch them together to remove glare. With another app, Photomyne, you must press and hold the camera shutter for a few seconds. Pic Scanner Gold requires you to hold the camera centered over the picture and tap the screen to focus before hitting the shutter.
Speed of scanning: Pic Scanner Gold and Photomyne are the only two apps with which you can scan multiple photos or a full album page at once, and have all the photos automatically cropped and saved. This does speed up scanning, but it also reduces scan resolution. If using one of these apps, you should ideally scan only one or two photos at a time.
Cropping proficiency: The main advantage of scanner apps over Apple’s Camera app is that scanner apps automatically detect and crop the scans. Not having to crop everything yourself saves time and effort. All scanner apps use similar cropping algorithms and crop accurately if you follow a few simple rules. Stuff like: lay the pictures flat, use natural daylight to avoid glare and shadows, keep the camera at the recommended distance from photos (usually 15–30 cm), etc. Following these rules and a bit of practice is all it takes to get well-cropped images.
Privacy of photos: Apps such as Photoscan and Photomyne save scans on your device as well as their servers, so you can access them on all your devices. The downside is that your personal photos are on their servers. Pic Scanner Gold, on the other hand, saves scans locally, only on your device. This assures privacy, but it also means that you need to backup the scans on a computer, flash drive or elsewhere by yourself.
Ancillary features: All apps offer editing tools, filters, the ability to make albums and slideshows, etc. Here are a few other features to look for:
- Captions and metadata: You should be able to add digital annotations — dates, places and descriptions to scans. Ideally, all these details should also get added to image metadata, so that the details stay embedded in the photos even when you export or transfer them to another device. Pic Scanner offers this feature.
- Colorizing B&W photos: Wouldn’t it be nice to turn old B&W photos into color? Photomyne offers this. If you are using another app, you can also colorize photos online for free with Fotor or Palette.
- Shareable slideshows: Many people like to share photos by email, but most email services limit attachments to 20MB — so you can’t share a too many photos. Pic Scanner Gold lets you make compact slideshows of up to 50 photos that can be shared via social media or even email.
- Glare removal: While scanning with Google Photoscan is slower since every photo needs to be clicked four times, it’s also the only app that removes glare by using the “good” areas from each of those 4 scans.
- Making stuff with photos: Pic Scanner Gold can convert scans or photos imported from the iOS Photos library into shareable greeting cards and printable calendars — a great way to enjoy and share photos.
Price of the app: The price of photo scanner apps ranges from free (Google Photoscan) to $70 (Photomyne). Photomyne also charges cloud storage fees of up to $20 per month. Pic Scanner Gold costs $7.99 — a one-time price for unlimited use of all features — no in-app purchases or subscriptions.
What else to do once you’ve finished scanning?
Review and edit the scans: Most apps include editing tools, but use them sparingly. Here’s a brief guide on how to use editing tools correctly.
Correct the dates: If you scan a 1980s photo today, its metadata will contain today’s date, and the photo won’t appear in the correct chronological order in your collection. You must amend it to the old date to fix this problem. Make sure your photo scanner app lets you update the metadata date.
Add descriptions: In old times, we made notes behind photos (Who, what, where etc.) Now you can embed these details into the photos as metadata. Pic Scanner also offers the option to print these as captions below photos.
Make a couple of backups: After spending so much effort scanning photos, adding captions etc., you’ll definitely want to back up everything in at least two different places, e.g. on your computer, external drive or Dropbox.
Share memories with family: There’s no better, easier way to spread love than to remind loved ones of the cherished times you’ve spent together.
What to do with the albums once they’re scanned?
Please, please, don’t toss them. Going through old photo albums, being able to touch them, is absolutely wonderful. Much more nostalgic than browsing photos on the phone. Scanning and putting them on your phone, computer or in cloud storage preserves and makes them easy to access, but photos that were printed decades ago are your true link with the past. They are worth cherishing and preserving.
The best way to preserve loose photos is to store them in acid-free archival boxes. These are inexpensive and widely available. Keep them in these boxes — sorted, bundled and labeled by year or by decade.
If you are really short of space and can’t keep all the old printed photos, keep at least those that are most meaningful to you. Offer the rest to others in your family who feature in them and might want them.
