Google's PhotoScan app: how and why you should use it (Blog #40)

Hi! Welcome to my latest blog in which I am going to give you a rundown of PhotoScan, a scanner app from Google Photos that lets you scan and save your printed photos as digital copies using your phone's camera, and then save and store them on your photo storage cloud. 

First, a little bit of history. Mass market film photography became popular with the introduction of the Kodak Brownie camera in 1900. I know that my family was using a film camera to capture holiday snaps from the late 1950s, and when I cleared out my parent's house in the 2010s there were numerous boxes full of black and white, and colour photos. I suspect that this accumulation of photo prints is commonplace. 

Digital photography began in the late 1960s and early 1970s, with the development of the first digital sensors and cameras, but wasn't mainstream until the emergence of smartphones in 1992, which in effect made anyone who owned a smartphone a photographer.

Personally I have not taken a photo that required developing and printing in hard copy for around 15-years now, but before then I had acquired thousands of them. My collection is exclusively holiday snaps, taken on sunny days, with nothing right when it comes to producing a great photo. That's how it was before I got into photography and tidied up my act, so to speak. 

I decided it was time to curate my print collection, digitise it, and save to my photo clouds.

First, you need to install the PhotoScan app on your phone. Create an account if you don't already have a Google account.  

Scanning is easy: place the photograph down on a flat surface, open the app, and follow the onscreen instructions to position the photo within the frame, then move the phone's screen over the photo, following the directions given onscreen. It's that simple. If you've done good job a green tick will appear onscreen; if you haven't, then try again. 

Your scanned photos will be stored within the app on your phone. My scanned photos are also automatically stored on my Google Photos account and my Amazon Photos account.

In terms of the quality of the scans, well, they can only be as good as the photo you've scanned, no better, however, you can edit the scanned image using whichever editing app you prefer. 

Immediately below is an as-scanned photo I took on a film camera, probably a simple point and shoot, on one of the Greek islands around 20-years ago. 

This second image is a quickly edited version. Not perfect, but I think better. 

To sum up, I think the PhotoScan app is a great little addition for any photographer whose photo collection stretches back beyond the days of digital. 

Being able to create digital versions of you printed photos offers a number of advantages:

1. Your photos can be safely stored without the risk of the image deteriorating 

2. The scanned image is editable

3. Your photo collection is portable 

4. Your photo collection can be easily shared 

5. Old photos can be displayed on a digital frame

6. You can create albums making finding photos easier.

I hope this blog has been useful to you. I look forward to seeing you in my next blog. In the meantime you can follow me via my various social media channels, which are listed at the top. 

A special mention for my latest Instagram account that is dedicated to my smartphone photography @smart_phone_photographer_53.

© Mike Young 2024.