Digitizing old family photos
We have already talked about the best way to digitize your old family photos with a scanner. But not everyone has a scanner at home. Over the last years, smartphones became widely popular and their built-in cameras are becoming better day by day.
Is my smartphone's camera good enough?
Depending on how old your smartphone is the quality of your camera differs. In general, smartphones which are no older than two years should be fine. However, you have to make sure to provide the best available environment.
Using your smartphone as a scanner
Taking photos of your photographs is actually pretty easy if you apply some simple guidelines. For this tutorial, we are using Google's PhotoScan app.
Steps:
1. Go to a bright room with plenty of natural light
2. If it's already dark outside you can use an artificial light source. Make sure you are only using a bright and even light source.
3. Avoid mixing different light sources (results in color shifting)
4. Avoid spotlights (create inhomogeneous exposure)
5. If it's too dark your photograph will become grainy or even blurry
6. Try to avoid the built-in flash of your smartphone
7. Either use available light or artificial light, not both
8. In doubt always wait until the next day and use natural sunlight
9. Put your photos on a flat and monochrome surface (best is grey or white)
10. Flatten them as much as possible
11. Make sure the photograph is not exposed to direct sunlight
12. Download Google's free PhotoScan app, available for both Android and iOS
13. Scan your photos as shown in the built-in tutorial
14. Get as close as possible to the image – try to line up the borders to the PhotoScan frame
15. Try to hold your smartphone as steady as possible
16. Let the app do the work
17. Enjoy your digitized photograph
Why you should be using a scanner app
It is possible to simply photograph the image with your built-in camera app. However, these apps are not built for that purpose. Apps like Google's PhotoScan or Apple's Notes are solely built to create high-quality reproductions of documents and photographs.
It's very hard to perfectly align your smartphone to the photograph. This almost always causes distortions and nonparallel lines. Due to their shiny surface old photographs tend to reflect light. By using computational photography professional scanner apps take multiple photographs, which are combined to a single glitch-free photograph.
The limits of PhotoScan and Co
If the environment is right apps like PhotoScan and iOS Notes do a good job. But there are also limitations. Resolution is determined by the pixels of your camera. The process cannot be standardized and images will never look the same. It is very hard to create a 1:1 reproduction. Overall resolution and detail cannot be compared to a real scan.
Using such apps is nice to quickly create a digital image of your photograph but should not be used for serious digitization.
For quality reasons, we prefer scans created with a scanner. Working with high-resolution images is mandatory for good restoration work.
Ready to Restore Your Photos?
Once you have digitized your photographs, send them to us for a free quote. We respond within 12 hours.