How to Scan Old Photos with a Smartphone

Not everyone has a flatbed scanner. Not everyone needs one. For many family photo restoration projects — particularly when dealing with a modest number of photographs or when mobility is a concern — a smartphone camera can produce results good enough for AI restoration.

Here's how to get the most out of smartphone photo capture.

The Fundamental Challenge

A smartphone camera is capturing a photograph of a photograph. The quality of the result depends on:

• Lighting (the biggest variable)
• Camera stability (no shake)
• Focus accuracy (critical for small detail)
• App processing (some apps are significantly better than others)

Lighting: The Critical Variable

Never use a flash on a photograph. The flash creates harsh reflections from the photograph's surface that obscure image detail. Always use ambient or positioned artificial light.

Best setup: Two diffuse light sources, one on each side of the photograph at a 45-degree angle, creating even illumination without direct reflection. Desk lamps with white bulbs work well; avoid colored or warm-tinted bulbs.

Avoid direct sunlight. Sunlight from a window creates harsh directional light and color temperature problems.

Raking light reveals texture. If you want to see surface damage (cracks, texture), use raking light (nearly parallel to the photograph surface). If you want to capture the image content and minimize surface texture, use more frontal lighting.

App Options for Smartphone Scanning

Google PhotoScan (free): Specifically designed for photographing photographs. Captures multiple images at different angles and stitches them to reduce glare. Results are generally better than a single photograph.

Microsoft Lens (free): Good at document capture, works for photographs with some quality.

Scanner Pro (iOS, paid): High-quality image capture with good processing options.

For best quality, capture in RAW format if your phone supports it. RAW files preserve more information than JPEG for subsequent processing.

Post-Capture Processing

Smartphone captures of photographs typically need:

• Perspective correction (straightening the edges of the photograph)
• Color correction (removing the color cast from your lighting)
• Cropping (removing the area around the photograph)

AI restoration tools handle these corrections effectively once you've gotten a reasonable capture.

Our photo restoration tool processes smartphone captures. The AI corrects for the typical quality differences between smartphone capture and flatbed scanning.