Best Practices for Scanning Old Photos, Receipts, and Paper Documents
Here I am sharing the best tips for digitizing your old prints of your memorable photos, paper documents and business receipts.
Clean the Photo Prints
Clear the dirt from a dusty photo. If there are some tough stains on the printed photo, use all-purpose foam cleaner, spot remover, or screen cleaner and then gently wipe with a soft microfiber towel. Read below for digitally removing the left spots and blemishes.
Contrasting Background
Place the photo prints or a paper document on a flat background having contrasting color to the print. For example, you can use a home table, or a plywood sheet in single plain color. In my case, I used a black-colored hard mouse pad.
Use a Glare Free Light Source
Avoid direct sunlight. At daytime, place your paper prints next to a window. The phone stand should not create its shadow over the prints – so, keep the prints between window and the stand. Turn the Flash to off for removing glare and reflections.
If you scan photos at night-time, then you can use a ring light for remove the shadows - you can also use focus lights and turn their face towards the ceiling for avoiding direct light over the prints.
Do not forget to clean the lens of your smartphone before capturing photos.
Use a Photo Scanning app
Use a scanning app such as PhotoScan by Google. In my opinion, Microsoft Lens is the best scanning app for Android and iOS devices – check here why it is the best scan app.
For documents, you can also use the built-in scan feature of the camera app of your smartphone.
Pro Tip
You can save scanned documents in either PDF or JPG format. However, I recommend saving photos of old prints in JPG format.
Avoid Camera Shaking
Avoid movements while tapping the photo capture button of mobile phone. For this purpose, it is best idea to fix the smartphone on a tripod stand. Under the smartphone, keep your printed photos on a revolving chair or stool. When taking scans, instead of moving the smartphone, slowly move the revolving stool and when Microsoft Lens creates borders around the print, then gently tap the capture button.
To avoid movements, while using the camera app (for documents), you can speak “Capture” or “Smile” to instruct camera to take photo – to access this feature in Samsung Galaxy phone, open Camera app settings and scroll down to the shooting methods.
Method to Remove Photo Blemishes Free
Often old prints of photos and documents have tough spots on the surface. A simple wipe method cannot work over them. After scanning the photo, you can use some photo editing software for removing those spots. You can use Adobe Photoshop or Canva for this purpose.
As a free option, open a scanned photo in Microsoft Photos app on Windows PC → click Edit Image → select Retouch option and here fix the spots.
After scanning the prints through Microsoft Lens, save them in phone gallery. Now you can easily share them online including Google Drive, email, or on WhatsApp.
