How to scan old family photos with your phone

The best pictures for a memorial, anniversary or reunion slideshow are often prints in a shoebox or album. You don't need a scanner to use them: a phone does a good job if you avoid the two usual problems, glare and crooked edges.

Use a scanning app, not the camera

A plain photo of a print usually has a reflection, a slight angle and a background around the edges. A scanning app fixes all three:

Google PhotoScan (free, iPhone and Android) takes several shots as you move the phone over the print and combines them to remove glare, then crops and straightens it.
The Notes app on iPhone (Scan Documents) and other document scanners crop and straighten well, but are made for paper; check that colors aren't washed out.

Whichever you use, scan one photo and look at it full screen on a computer before doing a hundred.

Getting good light

Use soft, even daylight, near a window but out of direct sun. Turn off overhead lights that reflect in glossy prints.
Turn off the flash.
Lay prints flat on a dark, plain surface. Take photos out of plastic album sleeves; the plastic causes glare.
Hold the phone parallel to the print, directly above it.
Wipe off dust gently with a soft, dry cloth.

When a scanner is worth it

A flatbed scanner (many home printers have one) gives the sharpest results for small prints and photos you might print again or zoom into. Scan at 600 dpi; that's plenty for a slideshow on a TV. Many drugstores and photo labs also scan whole boxes of prints for a fee, which is worth it when there are hundreds and the deadline is close.

Keep the scans organized

Scan in rough order, album by album or decade by decade, so the files come out in order.
Write what you know on the way: a quick note of names and years for each batch saves guessing later.
Put everything in one folder on the computer, then pick the slideshow photos from there.

Scanned photos don't carry the date they were taken, so "sort by date" won't put them in order. Arrange them by hand. Naming the files with the year first (for example 1968-wedding.jpg) keeps them in order in the folder, which makes that much quicker.

Into the slideshow

In Porchlight Slideshow, drag the folder of scans in with your digital photos, then drag them into the story's order. Old prints are often lower resolution than phone photos; Porchlight tells you when photos you add may look soft on a big screen, so you can rescan the important ones. Next: how many photos you'll need.