PhotoScan by Google Photos

I love how intuitive the app was to digitally scan old photos of family members. I was turned onto this app when my father-in-law recently passed away. I was assisting my wife scan the numerous photos of her father throughout his life. We were using an Epson scanner and found it very tedious and time-,consuming despite the obvious grief we were experiencing for his recent passing. Nonetheless, I thought to myself with all the recent advances in technology isn’t their an easier way to scan these photos for posterity as well as use for a slideshow tribute? Yes, indeed there was and it was free of charge from Google. Works pretty darn well and am impressed how true to the actual pictures the digital copy chame out. I would highly recommend everyone use this app to scan old photos of family members, pets, or anything you cherish and want kept for posterity. Only issue of mine is the lack of real seamless syncing with my MacBook Pro. I find that the Google Photos app doesn’t want to work well with my MacBook Pro. It was getting stuck in the export of the data from my iPhone. Not sure if it is user error but recommend Google tech developers get on that!

This app is straight up AWESOME. There are other good scanner apps out there, but this is by far the best photo scanner app I have ever used. In fact, it might even be better than actual photo scanner machines. The quality of scans is great. I scanned several old family photos and they came out clear and accurate. It has to take a picture in the dead center of the picture, then it primos you to move to the four corners of the picture. It similar to when you take panoramic photos with your phone. By taking pictures of the center and each corner, it allows the software of the app to automatically get out any glare, but also maintain the integrity of the photo. Once you're finished with a batch you can save the photos to your Google Photos app. I highly recommend it to anyone, but especially those who have been wanting to scan old photos, but have been afraid of the amount of time it would take as well as the money to spend on a photo scanner. Here is your answer.

so I’m one of those “I never write reviews, but” yeah I’m here because I literally got teary-eyed when I saw the results of using Photoscan instead of just taking a photo of a photo. I have no-glare, not distorted, not faded photos of family from before I was born. I’d taken photos of these pictures before, because a lot of them are old and quite fragile and I wanted a record of their existence. The difference using Photoscan was…like I said, a little teary-eyed. Look, I was the girl who always had the camera, who holds reams of photos (from high school and college, especially) and puts a priority on protecting that physical print from time, wear, and tear. The Photoscan images are so good, they kinda look better than the print sometimes. It somehow balances the colors perfectly — not like a filter or editing black point, shadows, etc., but it just looks RIGHT. It’s better, but you wouldn’t realize it until comparing a couple of times. I am a photo person. I love looking back at these images, because you can hear stories about people all the time, but a photo…is so much more. And this app takes that next-level by preserving them the way they really look. It is incredible, and I truly think it’s the best “photo-to-computer” facilitator ever, including things like scanners. It’s simple to use and the results are stunning. Get it.

I used to use this a lot but misplaced it. I keep a list of apps, their price, what the in-app purchases and ratings when I buy them. When I write a review I save a copy - after all, if I gave it one star 3 yrs previously it's probably not something I’ll bother with unless the version history looks promising. (some developers maybe shouldn't be so eager to truncate theirs). Getting rid of glare & shadow is unique to this app so not having it was distressing. How could I lose it and my review? I've had to reset to factory settings multiple times because the native Notes are crashing. I *love* Notes and used it daily. Crashing means I have to run in & run out before it crashes and guess how effective searching through all the apps named Photo Scanner, Scan Photo or some variation is? Right.* I couldn't count on my review helping me find it- if there's been a major rewrite of the app the App Store wipes the "out of date" reviews. * one star down for having a non-memorable name; pretty much the same name as least half of the others like it

I don’t write reviews for apps but I am taking the time to do one for this app because I am so happy with it! I have struggled for a year with trying to get good photos of my paintings (i.e. no glare, no funky angle, etc) because I don’t have a fancy lighting so up with a tripod, etc and I can’t hold the phone still. I didn’t even have to take my paintings off of the walls to use this, even the ones that are hung way above my head (yes, I am short). It does give me a warning to try not to tilt the phone but even when I do, the scan is still great! It worked where the light was on and also where the painting only has normal indoor lighting (no lights on). I want to make a calendar with my artwork and I think this will allow me to do so very easily. So happy!!!!!

I like this app, a lot actually. It does a good job of removing glare, but you still have to have good lighting otherwise some parts of the photo will be brighter than others. But I might just be noticing that bc I like to edit photos and can run into problems if a photo doesn’t have consistent lighting. But even with that I would still give this app five stars, except that isn’t the only issue that I’ve been having. About half the time that I’m trying to do a scan the app just quits and I am sent to my homepage. I’m wondering if this is bc I have an older phone ? I Have an iPhone 6? So is it possible that this app isn’t compatible with my phone. I’m going to give this app 3 stars, only because if it takes me 3 tries to get one scan without the app mysteriously quitting then that def leaves areas for improvement . However if I hear from support on this app who can help me resolve my issue then I will change my rating to five stars. I’ve already tried deleting and reinstalling the app once before.

This app does the basic function of removing parallax from a flat image and it often removes the glare. I use it primarily to scan magazine covers and important documents. A significant problem has been encountered when trying to position crosshairs, as they often move as I remove my finger from the screen. This occurs when the view changes to the overview, so the error is not detected until the image is magnified again. A second problem occurs in the management of the saved images. I do not use Google photos to store the images and so local storage is the Apple photos camera roll. When I modify an image, the app requires that I replace the existing image if I want to keep it. It would be helpful to allow replacing or adding to the camera roll or just storing locally in the App. It would also be helpful to dump local storage directly to an album and then clear the storage without losing the images from the photos app.

It handles both gray and color photos just fine. Instructions are easy - you will be scanning in no time. It handles pictures in frames or behind the glass - its anti glare feature is awesome. I wish they had a bit better border detection as I often find myself tweaking borders for older pictures. The UI for border detection could be better likewise / provide better controls as pictures could get small while it gets harder to catch the border at such scale (with my imperfect eyesight). Still, I like the app a lot. Taking pictures in batches works faster. When scanning albums, just keep going - you can adjust borders for your batch later before saving them all in one go. This speeds things up significantly rather than taking a picture/adjusting its borders/saving one at a time.

I have been using this app to recapture printed photographs. The scanned images are of great quality however, just like anything else there are several factors that need to be considered such as room lighting, condition of original, size of the original, etc. The program does not have photo editing tools, but the scanned image gives you a good copy to start with if you then want to edit it. Most of the images I was able to touch up using google photos edit tools and was satisfied with the results. I am sure the images would look even better with professional editing tools but like I said, this program gives you a better starting point that just taking a picture of the original or even worse scanning the photo.

How do I say this. Forgive the length of this but this is the first time I’ve addressed it. Daddy passed years ago, independent mother started having falls, less social and COVID. Mother moves in with family, I inherit family videos and photos. Being the baby, many were before my time. I had the old 8mm reel video tapes transferred to thumb drives and copies given to siblings. Kinda pricey but worth it. Now the family pictures. Boxes and boxes of them. Even to have them scanned professionally, tons of time is required to filter through, identify, and be selective in the ones to duplicate. Do it myself with a flatbed scanner seemed daunting. Found this free app and thought if it wasn’t sufficient then I’d find a paid app to get the job done. Looks promising so that was my game plan. Fast forward 6 months. My house burns down. Fire and water damage. All photos damaged but some salvagable. I haven’t printed anything yet but this app is so easy to use and what is appearing on screen is such good quality. I’m thrilled. Thank you to the minds who created this ❤️

I found out after the fact that these were saving to my camera roll. Otherwise, the options of saving within the app are minimal and one at a time. I just did the 4-point scan for hundreds of photos with this app in preparation of a wedding. Biggest struggle: glossy photos are fine (I need to adjust about 1 of every 4 because it’s unusable), but the ones that have more of the matte finish are disasters. The app cannot adjust to the grainy texture of this kind of photo. And unfortunately, I had a lot of these. I’ve also had to play around with the room lighting quite a bit to find something optimal. Otherwise, I do like that the app can drastically reduce/eliminate glare on the more glossy, simple photos. It’s better than just the iPhone camera/app by itself!

Of the plethora of scanning apps I have used, this one is by far my favorite. It is easy enough to use, and more importantly, works. However, it can sometimes takes a moment to get everything lined up and situated. It’s not fast at all and is unenjoyable for multiple page documents. However, if it was as fast as using the camera and taking pictures it would probably be giving those same results. The only other main thing that could probably be improved is ease of use. I don’t have much of a problem using this and getting the results I desire. However, I can’t imagine someone under 15 or over 60 being able to open this right up and be able to use the app with any amount of confidence or proficiency.

This app is very good and I have tried several including both phone based and also a flatbed scanner. It removes glare very well from both satin and glossy photos. It seems to auto correct for faded color which eliminates a post scan step. The auto cropping is also good. The two suggestions would be 1) To allow an auto create of an album. 2) To allow the capture of some notes along with the picture. But these two things are minor and can also be handled after the fact. Modified Review: the final resolution is pretty low... several other apps do significantly better... I stand by the review above... it is easy to use and does a good job of removing glare, however, the current final resolution does not allow for a good display on a full sized monitors which is should be table stakes for type of app.

UPDATE: Looks like I jumped the gun a little bit. The app did transfer all photos (original and cropped) via thunderbolt cable! However, it still needs option to export multiple photos directly from within the app. The initial portion of the app - photo-scanning images is very good. I also like the ability to crop the images. For that, Id rate 5 stars. But it completely falls flat for what I would say is the most important part - exporting the images. After scanning and cropping, the photos are saved to the camera roll (as cropped), but when they’re imported to a desktop via thunderbolt cable, the photos are not cropped. That’s completely useless. There is, however, an option to extort photos directly from the app, but only one at a time!?? The app allows selecting multiple photos but then the only option is to delete. That’s a huge usability error. So the only way I can export over 500 finalized cropped photos is to export the one at a time via AirDrop. Like I said, great on the front end but complete fail on the backend. Developers, please add option to; A) bulk export from the app, and B) Export finalized photos from the camera roll.

I was spending hours scanning photos on my Cannon Flat Bed. I can scan a photo in 3 seconds with this app! And I love that the pictures are immediately saved in both my Google Photos and IPhone Photos without being asked! Thank you for saving that step!!! A couple things to know. Click the lightning bolt on bottom of screen to turn off your flash and cancel out glare. It saves the extra seconds it takes to readjust the photo. Also don't let Google modify your picture when it pops up. It was cropping off heads and the focus of the picture when I went to look at them in my Google Photos. Thanks for making this great app!!!!!

There are about 1 million photo apps. And most of them work fine. This one works amazingly well. And just a few seconds you can quickly reproduce almost any old photo so that it looks beautiful in the digital universe. I sorted all my family photos, set on the kitchen floor, and and just a few minutes digitized everything I needed for a special family event. It comes in super handy whenever you want to send a photo to a friend. Also, does great with text based printed items as well. I’ve use this app since 2017, and it has never disappointed me once.

I searched years ago for a way to digitize all the family albums. I painstakingly used our company scanner to scan in pages of photos, trimmed each photo individually. Used photoshop to adjust color and created digital photo books in indesign, exported to pdf’s to send out to family members. This took months to accomplish. In 2 days time I have scanned in 2 albums, adjusted the edges of all photos and am now ready to either create photo albums or send them out as is. I’m very impressed with this app. I found it easy to use after reading the instructions.

TL;DR... Pros: easy to scan pics, produces nice quality scans. Cons: glitchy, some functions are unintuitive. I really like this app and I want to like it more. Unfortunately, the ease of use sort of goes out the window with the glitches and bugs. I’ve been able to work around most of it, but it becomes a pain to have to do it with every scan. Developers (if Google Devs actually look at these reviews)... Bug 1: when scanning, the corners are so far off it’s not funny. Even when putting the photo on a contrasting background so it can see the edges better. Seems like the window is too tall (in portrait) or too wide (in landscape). Bug 2: when editing a scan, when adjusting the corner positions, the zoomed in circle is mostly filled with part of the original in-zoomed image, and I cannot see what’s under the crosshairs. It’s basically useless. Bug 3: I occasionally need to close the app, reopen it, and then view scanned images again for them to be saved to or appear on the camera roll. This happens randomly and throws things out of sequence. Super frustrating.

I LOVED this app when it first released. It was perfect. The photos were hi res, crisp, no glare, and it cropped the images perfectly. But it has come down over the years. Now, my images constantly have glare unless I have just the right lighting in the room. And even then, I still have to ignore small glares. The pictures seem to be fuzzy now. Sometimes it better to just take a normal picture with my iPhone camera app. The biggest headache now is that the magnifying glass tool that you use to crop the images is completely broken (displays just a black dot). This makes it impossible to accurately crop your images. Makes it impossible to conveniently crop them at all. It’s so fiddly. Judging by the fact that this app hasn’t been updated in over 4 years, my guess is Google stopped caring. Such a bummer.

There haven’t been any updates in a year. I sincerely hope this great little app hasn’t been dumped by the side of the metaphorical road. I love that it’s free, however, I’d be willing to pay a subscription - which I can’t believe I just wrote - but it would be worth it for keeping the app up to date & useable. I use this app & Photomyne for my photo organizing. Each has a definite list of pros & cons, but I like having a tool box of different scanning & editing apps that cover all the bases. They’re both favorites. Please don’t abandon this app, Google. Thanks!

This app is great! Does what it says, stores files in with other photos where they can be edited(usually only to rotate) then be sent off to where they need to be in your choice of format. Takes roughly 2 seconds to capture, then your off doing whatever else you got going. No complaints, I use no other apps for capturing documents. This app works flawlessly and makes life so much easier! Definitely download! And tell your boss! Who knows, saving his time could lead to another way to make life easier/better!

I started scanning old photos one at a time for posterity for my family. Was long and painful process. Happened to read about this app and downloaded it. Made things so much easier! I don’t even need to take pics out of albums. Just open the page, focus on desired pic, click and follow the dots. Then, just download them all from phone to hard drive. It takes a bit of getting used to so That the pic doesn’t get overexposed but it’s not difficult. Really appreciate how this app made a huge long-term project a lot easier.

I made several scrapbooks of my family photos before digital photos were around. But now I wanted to preserve them digitally but they are too big for my flatbed scanner. This app is great for taking digital copies of these large pages so I can view them on my iPad. Sometimes I can even scan the scrapbook pages right from their plastic overlays without any glare. The app even takes pictures of the pages and crops them automatically so just the pages are the photos, without me having to crop out any unnecessary surroundings. Great app!

This is the only app that you can take photos on your cell phone of photo albums without needing to remove the pictures. Removing pictures from albums can be destructive to the pictures. This app removes the glare by moving the camera around the picture. It only takes about 5 seconds a picture. Best of all, it directly uploads into Apple Photos. Other apps require you to use there organizer and their cloud. One wish that it had an easy way to annotate the picture as you take them.

The UI on this app is very simple and makes it incredibly easy and fast to scan your photos. It corrects the perspective and colors of the photo very well. Unfortunately, the resulting image is very grainy and well below the resolution that my iPhone takes photos. I tested a photo scanned in this app vs. taking a normal photo in the native Camera app and when you zoom into the details the difference is night and day. The image quality that this app saves in will be fine if you just want to share it on social networks or other low-res applications. However, if you’re like me and want to archive old photographs in a high-quality digital form without a traditional scanner, then you’ll have to look elsewhere.

This app is definitely the easiest way to "scan" a bunch of old photos without glare. But compared to just taking a regular photo with my iPhone camera app or using a real scanner, this app often gives lower quality results - subtle brightness and color gradations are lost and fine details get blurry. If you just need to scan a photo once in a while, I think you're better off using the camera app and be careful to avoid glare - and if you have a lot of photos to scan, consider sending them to a scanning service; you'll get the best results at maximum convenience (yes you could also buy a scanner but you probably have better things to do than spend days just scanning and tweaking photos).

Freezes CONSTANTLY. Also why can’t I take all the photos I take and transfer them to my gallery on my iPhone? I have to send each picture individually to my gmail then save it to my phone. For some reason on my iPhone it won’t let me select all photos and transfer them to my gmail then save them to my gallery. Btw I have well around 50-60 pictures that I’m trying to get from physical to digital with this app and doing each picture individually through gmail then saving it from gmail to my gallery is majorly time consuming. Could have easily by passed this by adding a select all button and then a save all to phone gallery option.

This is an amazing app! It lets you easily use your phones camera to “scan” physical photos. It auto detects the edges of the photo, works best if you put the photo on a contrasting surface (I.e. light surface for dark photo and dark surface for a light photo), so you don’t have to spend hours cropping the edges. You can then save the photos to your device or in the cloud. This is great for finally getting those old family photos online without having to mess with a printer/scanner and without paying someone else an arm and a leg!

Google updated this app a few months ago so that it automatically syncs with your photo library. Now whenever I attempt to manually edit the corners of the captured image, the app crashes when updating the photo in my iOS photo library. After that the app is never useable again. It crashes every time I reopen it and this behavior survives through force-quitting the app and reboots. The only way to get it to work again is to uninstall and reinstall. Of course if you ever edit a photo manually again you’re back in the same boat. So frustrating and disappointing. I keep the app on my phone in hopes that someday Google will issue an update to fix it! This used to be one of the most useful apps I’ve ever had.

I choose PhotoScan as it’s the only app I know of that does not charge me to get full access to its features that helps me get my old film camera era photos to shareable format. It’s overall good but can be tenacious at times to get the right quality and lighting and avoid reflections though. Sometimes the edges needs to be readjusted to fit the photo. Though at least there is an option that doesn’t cost extra most others would charge for extra features or to access the app at all.

This is a great app for capturing old images in digital format. The only downside is that it can be clunky and not complete the process, or it requires you to chase it down across the table away from the picture. And it faults with a message that could be more friendly to the user other than a terse message to hold the picture in the viewing area... which of course I’ve been doing. This last point is the reason it’s not 5 stars. Obviously the marketing department has not been too involved with the launch of this product.

The only thing I wish it would do is allow notations or captions that would “live” with the image- maybe on the small white frame that has the Google branding that gets added to the scan. The other thing is I wish it would connect to my Google Photos account so I could back up quickly. Otherwise, amazing app. Great quality scans. I plan on getting some fresh prints of some old pictures for some wall collages. The rest I’m just digitizing to save the family history for future generations.

My granny is in her nineties and is basically the family archivist. This app is great for when the family gatherings when the blunder years photos come out (and other fondly treasured snaps). The stitched and de-glared photos seem compressed, which makes the results slightly mushy no matter how steady I try to make my hands. Not a perfect replacement for a place with a proper photoscanner perhaps, but as is often the case with the photos I’m duping: “the best camera is the one you have on you at the time”

This app is awesome! A great way to quickly scan photos and save them to your phone. Only problem I've run into is that the same great technology that allows you to edit corners and cropping and save it across the app and the rest of your albums is that if you try to remove them from the app it will delete them everywhere. This is causing me problems since the app has a lot of data in it and is therefore crashing a lot. Other than that it's awesome. Definitely recommend.

I am blessed with beautiful grandkids that came over to see me. As we have all been isolating and only going out for groceries, I needed their hugs. It was a great Mother’s Day and pictures that my daughter gave me I wanted to scan and post some of them because they are so beautiful and the scanner just makes the best quality picture I’ve ever seen a scanner produce. Very sharp detail. Not grainy. Thank you for fixing that graininess with scanning! The pictures are unreal ! Very good quality to them !!

Just downloaded this app a few minutes ago. So far, it’s great! It crops and removes the glare for you all at once! It also automatically uploads to your Gmail photos account (after signing in). It’s amazing. So far it has cropped all my photos perfectly except for one where it cropped it more to the left than I would like. I gave it four stars because I would like the option to change the date of multiple photos at once (I actually don’t see the option to change the date at all).

PhotoScan will change your life. It’s wonderful. What better time than the pandemic to dig out those old prints and digitize them? You will find yourself transported into happier times as you look at all those baby and vacation photos! Once they are in Google Photos , splurge on some photo books. I use Mixbook. You will get so much pleasure from “looking back” when it’s kind of scary being in the present or the future! Love PhotoScan. Thank you to whoever invented it. It is getting me through this COVID crisis!

Overall I like the app and it does what it's stopped to. I like how the photos automatically upload to Google photos. I encountered lagging, lots of crashing, and my phone heating up when I was trying to scan a whole photo album worth of photos (around 50). I had to take a break and let my phone cool down and then continue after 30 min or so. This process happened continuously. If you're planning on scanning a few photos at a time, this app is excellent!

As a mom with 3 kids, 2 of them being prolific picture creators, you might imagine how much paper clutter that we have, especially wanting to keep so many of their masterpieces! This app means that you can keep it all, without burying yourself and your loved ones in paper! This way, I have a copy of their work, while only keeping a physical copy of the really important pieces. I use it for photos too, and even documents, and it is WONDERFUL! Thank you, thank you for this app!

I’ve taken old photographs, birth certificates, and other important documents, and digitized them using this scanner. I had played around with so many others, but the fact that whatever you’re trying to scam in is photographed 5 times ensures highest quality of the images/content, so that others may enjoy the clarity and details. If you need to digitize anything really, start with this app first so that you can compare the ease of use to others.

This app is super simple to use. It pretty much does it all for you. You know those pictures you get that have stuff you didn't want around the edges? You can easily make that stuff go away on your scanned photo. My mom still uses a camera with film and is always giving me pictures I want to keep but have no room for, I love this app! They can now all go into Google Photos and it's "one stop shopping!" All in one place, nice, neat uncluttered and supremely space saving. Love it!

This app is exceedingly accurate & helps me take pics of framed art (eliminates glare), images in books, photo IDs & business cards, docs and those stupid receipts that have disappearing ink(!)... As an art historian, it was difficult for me to take a good shot because I have a hand tremor until I discovered PhotoScan in its infancy. I use this app daily, have recommended it to tons of people and cannot exaggerate how awesome this photo app is. Plus, this is a Google product - a plus in my opinion!

I looked for a scanner that would scan photos from old albums or portraits that can’t be removed from the album or frame without wrecking the image. I tried 4 apps, and this was the only one that allows you to have a less-than-steady hand and get a good image. It also allows you to scan a page full of photos at once, as long as there are images close to the corners of the page, which is a great option.

I’ve worked on scanning in all my old photos using a computer and printer/scanner... torture! This app is amazing! Quick and easy to use! And I already have my phone set up to back my photos up to google photos, so I have my computer beside me and can scan in a “roll” of photos and then easily select all taken in one month and shift the dates. Thank you Jesus for all those years I had photos developed with the dates printed on back or front!

This is a great tool for getting old photos, epically ones your family won't part with, into digital. It's very easy to use and gives you good results most of the time. Users should beware of glare in the window when framing your shot. I'd *love* to see this product augmented with better editing tools or at least allow 3rd party integration within the app so I can edit my photos within Photoscan. Also, zooming in the main window would be quite helpful as would pre-photo resolution options.

Great scanner. Problem is they demand access to your photos, which is fine unless you don’t have a lot of storage with Google. Google scanner requires a download of all your photos and then they harass you to buy storage. If you don’t, then you may lose access to gmail due to insufficient storage Yes, they may need access to your photos to store the scan. But no, there is no reason they need access to all the photos you have stored historically and, if you have chosen to store them in iCloud with Apple, then you get to pay for storage with Google. So essentially, this is a trick to get you to buy storage with Google.

Before downloading this app I was skeptical of what it could do and how well it could execute it. Quickly, after using it I got the hang of it and had scans of Polaroid pictures I had taken to share with my friends. The quality of the scans is something to be excited about because if done right the quality like for the Polaroids that I scanned could be better than the original picture itself. Job well done Google. :)

This is a wonderful free App from Google to scan single page documents for personal use. Very easy to use and the quality of scan is superb. Sharing with email and saving the scan to Google drive is fairly easy once you get the hang of it. It is extremely useful during the tax time. I have used other scan apps in past but find this particular App the best. Highly recommend.

I love using this app almost daily to take photos of postcards and walk-mounted art. I collect postcards and often photograph them flight on a desk or table and, more likely than not, there will be glare from the ambient light. This app completely eliminates that glare. The app also tries to figure out where the borders of your image are, but lets you adjust them if you want a different image than the one it selected.

This app is really great and convenient for me as a person who takes a bunch of film and scans them. It scans and transfers the photos well on to digital. My one and only issue though is that it lags terribly, but only when you have a bunch of photos already scanned. So I have to rotate and scan, download, and delete so the process can go more smoothly. Again genius app just needs some bug fixes for it to run better with storage.