It’s time to dig out all of your old photo albums and stacks of prints. Google Photos, which offers free unlimited photo and video storage on Android, iOS, and the web, just introduced a new way to capture and organize photos taken before the days of digital cameras. Described as the “scanner from the future,” Google PhotoScan turns your prints into high-quality digital images. The new standalone app can scan just about any photo, anywhere, and is now available for Android and iOS.
Image captured with Google PhotoScan
One of the app’s most impressive features is its ability to detect and remove glare from overhead lights. Using a system called computational photography, a process that involves the convergence of computer graphics, computer vision and photography, the app is programmed to take multiple photos of the same image, map feature points, then combine the images into one high resolution photo.
PhotoScan can also detect edges, straighten and rotate images and prepare photos for editing. From there, images can be saved to your device or uploaded to Google Photos to be organized, searchable, shared, and safely backed.
7 Comments
Abrie Joubert May 2, 2017, 11:10 am
Will certainly download this
Jaspa February 13, 2017, 10:01 am
I’m going to have to check this out!
Jon February 13, 2017, 11:05 am
It was great and best of all – free!
Sarah Warsi January 6, 2017, 10:36 am
Wow, this is awesome! I had no idea about this, thank you for sharing!
Jon January 6, 2017, 11:25 am
Thanks Sarah!
Amy January 5, 2017, 8:07 am
Thank you so much!
Mario Aquilina November 16, 2016, 7:54 am
Hi Jon, this is great to know. I have all kinds of photos in albums and I’m sure there are plenty I would like to save electronically. I’ll have to look into this someday. Thanks for the heads up!