Good app for digitizing old photos ?

roundhouse

roundhouse

Red Skull
Joined
Aug 7, 2020
Member Number
2622
Messages
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I want to digitize a bunch of old photo albums , assuming I’m using a new iPhone

Every app claims to be the best for that ,


What say IBB ?

These are albums that didn’t get damaged when my parents house got four feet of water in it a few years ago , because they were on a top shelf , and I’d like to preserve them .

The person in the flannel shirt is my mom , in about 1946-48 we think .

Got tons of these in an album .
That I wanna digitize and put on an aura frame


IMG_6497.jpeg
 
PAToyota said:
For quality, you're going to want a flatbed scanner instead of taking pictures with a phone.
Click to expand...
A lot of these are stuck in an album , with a plastic cover stuck over the photo .

No way to get them out without damage .
 
Scooter said:
Scan the whole page. I just digitized my whole photo album last year while at work.
Click to expand...

This. As a bonus, it'll be way faster than one at a time and you're still getting the same resolution. You can break them up and crop them after they're scanned.
 
Give this a try.
www.google.com

PhotoScan – scanner by Google Photos

Photos from the past, meet scanner from the future. Scan and save your favorite printed photos with the PhotoScan app from Google Photos.
www.google.com www.google.com
You take 5-6 pics from different angles, and it integrates them into one good one.
 
I bought this, it was like $15 or something.

Easily Scan Your Old Photos

It has more functions that I want to use.

I have done thousands of photos, can't say I had even one failure.

It will do exactly what you are looking for. Lay the page on a flatbed scanner it will identify each photo and break them apart into separate pictures.
The plastic protective cover my screw with it a little bit but I am sure it has a setting for that.

When I was scanning loose photos I would fill the flatbed up, 4 or 5 photos and it would create a separate file for each photo.

I think I grabbed just any old flatbed scanner off ebay that had decent resolution.

If you want to manipulate the photo later save it as something like a Tif, they are a lot bigger than a standard .jpg. But slightly better quality for modifying, restoring. There are other formats as well if you are familiar with the stuff.

I think black and whites scan better, but this is a 30 year old color photo scanned through the plastic cover.



scanned521.jpg


Now you can run it through AI and make it as crystal clear as if it was taken today. The picture below is one pass through google gemini asking it to sharpen the image. They are as good as the time you want to spend on them.

Gemini_Generated_Image_gezj89gezj89gezj.png
 
tagging onto this... Found hundreds of old wheeling photos.. I can only get them to about ~400x300 resolution using the flatbed..... Would really like to get them to 1024x768, minimum. Function of the scanner or ?
 
rockota said:
tagging onto this... Found hundreds of old wheeling photos.. I can only get them to about ~400x300 resolution using the flatbed..... Would really like to get them to 1024x768, minimum. Function of the scanner or ?
Click to expand...

Depends on the scanner. My basic scanner goes up to 600dpi.

Screenshot 2026-06-02 at 9.48.14 PM.png


You're sort of talking two different things. DPI is "dots per inch" and that will affect the final pixel size of the image based on the initial size of the image you are scanning.

DPI.jpg


So if you take a 3"x5" image and scan it at 50dpi, you're going to get a 150pixel by 250pixel image. Same image scanned at 600dpi will get you an 1800p x 3000p image.

Coming out the other side, you could then print either one to fill an 8.5"x11" sheet of paper, but the 50dpi one is going to look like ****.
 
I bought a Epson perfection V19 flatbed scanner.

4800x4800 dpi, which is middle of road quality. It was $40 to my door used off ebay. It had decent resolution, flatbed, and run off USB only no extra power cord. All the things I wanted, it has been great.

I use auto feed scanners at work, they are horrible for anything but paper.

The scanning program you pair with is important, but you don't actually need an separate program. Just makes life easier with more options.
 
PAToyota said:
Depends on the scanner. My basic scanner goes up to 600dpi.

Screenshot 2026-06-02 at 9.48.14 PM.png


You're sort of talking two different things. DPI is "dots per inch" and that will affect the final pixel size of the image based on the initial size of the image you are scanning.

DPI.jpg


So if you take a 3"x5" image and scan it at 50dpi, you're going to get a 150pixel by 250pixel image. Same image scanned at 600dpi will get you an 1800p x 3000p image.

Coming out the other side, you could then print either one to fill an 8.5"x11" sheet of paper, but the 50dpi one is going to look like ****.
Click to expand...
tried increasing mine to 1200 dpi... still got same resolution. 🤷‍♂️ Turns out taking picture of pictures with the phone is faster and easier.
 
PAToyota said:
I don't know... That should get you a 3600x6000p image out of a 3x5.
Click to expand...
I'm sure it's in part the horrible build-in windows app. When I switched it to 1200dpi, it took 5x as long to actually do the scan as well. decided it wasn't worth the effort.
 
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