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Starting Out With the Basics: Windows Fax and Scan. Because every scanner driver is different, we’ll be starting out today with “Windows Fax and Scan,” a program included with Windows 7 that will scan for you even if you don’t have any other program to capture images.
Best Photo Scanner Apps for Mobile to Store Old Images
This photo scanner operates at 4800 dpi for the best clarity and detail in your photo and document scanning. Plus, you can preserve and repair your old photos as you scan. But that is not all. The new photos app finally got me off my butt to start scanning and archiving the old family photos. Many of them old b&w ones of low resolution. I have a very old E6 scsi scanner that still works, but not sure it will work with my mac mini.
Nowadays, almost nobody stores photos in an album since mobile is there to help you with this. There are many advantages of using a mobile or cloud storage to store images. First, you do not have to carry it everywhere. Wherever you have the internet, you have your images with you. Second, you do not have to get an expensive physical album since cloud storage doesn’t need that. Third, you can store as many images as you want. There is almost no limitation to store images in this digital era. However, suppose, you have a couple of real pictures of your 5th birthday or something like that, what you want to store digitally.
At such moments, you can just scan those images or capture them using this mobile to store on Google Drive or OneDrive or something like that. But, buying a scanner just to scan few images is a waste of money. On the other hand, your default camera settings may not be able to get a better picture of your old pictures. At such moments, you can head over to photo scanner apps for mobile to scan old photos and store them wherever you want. Here are some of the best photo scanner apps for Android and iOS those will let you save your images right away.
Best Photo Scanner Apps for Android and iOS
Getting a photo scanner app is not that difficult since you have multiple options for Android as well as iOS. However, utilizing them is what you need to know about. Therefore, check out these following photo scanner apps for Android and iOS.
1] PhotoScan by Google (Android, iOS)
PhotoScan is probably the latest iOS app by Google that is very useful and easy to use. In this case, you would be able to scan your images and store them in standard image format. PhotoScan by Google looks neat and clean, which makes it even better. On the other hand, you have fewer options so that you can be familiarized with it quickly. The most useful feature of this app is you can remove glare that comes up when capturing an oily paper with flash. PhotoScan for Android is available for Android 5.0, or later version. If you want to install it on iOS, make sure you have iOS 8.1, or later version. To get started with this app, just open up the camera, set the image according to the screen and hit the capture button. It will take few moments to render the picture, and follow that, you would get the result right away.
Download: Android, iOS
2] CamScanner (Android, iOS)
CamScanner is a very popular app among them, who often scan physical documents using mobile. CamScanner can also be used to scan old photos using mobile. This app is available for Android as well as iOS. To install it on Android mobile, make sure you have Android 4.0, or later version. iOS users should have iOS 8.0 and later version. After capturing an image using the camera, you will get few options to adjust the picture. For example, you can enhance colors and much more. CamScanner is accessible for generating a high-quality image, and the same thing can be found while scanning pictures. However, not all the features of CamScanner is available for free. You must have to purchase it to unlock them all. This is also possible to share scanned images on various social networking websites or via email and instant messaging services.
Download: Android, iOS
3] Shoebox (Android, iOS)
Shoebox is a quite old but very useful cross-platform app to scan old images and store them in standard image formats. The best part of this app is you can organize images by tags, dates, locations, etc. While capturing an image using this app, you can enter all those things along with small description so that you can understand that in future. If you are about to install it on Android mobile, make sure you have Android 2.3 and later version. iOS users must have to run iOS 6.0 or later version. The user interface of Shoebox is not bad. Nevertheless, feature wise, this app may lack behind other two apps those are mentioned above.
Download: Android, iOS
There are certainly more other similar photo scanner apps for Android and iOS. However, these are the most popular and useful tools out there.
Somewhere in your home, there’s a box of old analog photographs you probably want digital copies of. Unless you know how to use your scanner correctly, the image quality can turn out poor. Here’s how to get the best results.
If your memories are important to you, then it’s worth taking the time to do them right. Today we’re going to look at the largely overlooked tools and methods that’ll give you the best possible quality out of a scan of a less than perfect photo. We’ll see how to make the most of the scanning software and how to use graphics programs to make the image look better than the original photograph. Keep reading!
Starting Out With the Basics: Windows Fax and Scan
Because every scanner driver is different, we’ll be starting out today with “Windows Fax and Scan,” a program included with Windows 7 that will scan for you even if you don’t have any other program to capture images. Once we’ve covered the basics here, we’ll take a look at the Epson Scan program that comes with most Epson scanners. This is a fairly common program and should give you an idea of the kind of fine tuning you can do with the software bundled with your scanner.
Windows Fax and Scan is a basic, stripped down program that will perform the most basic functions of scanning if you can’t get your scanner driver to work or haven’t installed it.
The program is a pretty basic one. We won’t insult your intelligence and tell you how to use the “Preview” and “Scan” buttons, as most things are fairly straightforward in this program.
Your options are pretty threadbare. 300 DPI is a good pixel density to scan at for printing. And while the difference between “Color” and “Grayscale” is obvious, keep in mind that “Black and White” is actually a single color mode. All edges will be jaggy, and no anti-aliasing is allowed. This is a good mode for scanning line drawings, but horrid for photos. Use color or grayscale for best results.
Modern scanners are very well engineered to replicate a good image straight out of the box. But there are several mistakes being made here. Let’s take a look.
Straightening photographs smears the pixels and can result in a loss of resolution, so scan your photographs square to the edge of the flatbed lip. In addition to this, since we’re going to learn about making adjustments pre-scan, we’re going to only scan one image at a time. It’s more or less impossible to properly adjust three images at a time. They’ll have drastically different shadows, highlights, and midtones—even the automatic adjustments made by the scanner will likely be more accurate if images are scanned one at a time.
(Author’s note: Not everyone is going to appreciate the difference in quality that requires scanning photos individually. If you’re not patient enough to do them one at a time, this how to may not be for you.)
Save your file in a lossless format. JPG is not ideal as it is lossy. TIFF or PNG are the best formats as they compress the image file without creating artifacts or destroying the image quality. If you can help it, only use JPG to email files, never to archive them.
Advanced Scanning: Using Your Scanner’s Driver
Usually, these drivers start out in a “Home,” “Basic,” or “Office” mode for beginners. The professional mode gives you more options and isn’t that intimidating.
There are a lot of various options, most of which will be okay set to default.
![Best portable scanner for old photos Best portable scanner for old photos](https://forums.radioreference.com/attachments/general-scanning-discussion/31205d1296371065-best-old-time-radio-scanner-dsc02991.jpg)
If you have the option to scan in 24bit color, it’s your best bet. Most graphics files are 24-bit color, so we’ll start there. You also likely have greater options for pixel density, although a photo scan higher than 300 DPI is almost a waste of your time. The exception to this is if you’re doing enlargements.
The basic preview and scan buttons work as normal here, so we will be skipping right to the more technical parts. https://newcraft504.weebly.com/blog/best-hard-drive-for-mac-2tb.
Here’s where it pays off—your scanner driver should have some buttons that adjust levels and saturation. Making these before the scan can greatly improve image quality.
The basic idea is this: you can scan with default settings and make big adjustments in Photoshop or GIMP. But those edits are destructive to the image. They basically take the information already inside the image and stretch and squeeze it, throwing away detail. When you make adjustments to a histogram before you scan, you begin with a full value range without any tones that have been tossed out by a graphics program. This is why it’s not a good idea to scan multiple images at once—making precise adjustments with the scanner driver is impossible with multiple photos in the scanner bed.
If you have no idea how to use tools like the levels tool in the scanner, you can brush up by reading about how to adjust contrast like a pro.
Again, save your file in a lossless format. JPG is lossy. Lossy is bad. TIFF or PNG are the best formats without creating artifacts or harming the image quality. Remember, never use JPG to archive or print images, only to email them or upload them. Printing from JPG will result in an inferior print compared to an original lossless PNG or TIFF.
Improving Scans With Photoshop (Or GIMP)
Photoshop, GIMP, or a comparable graphics program should be your last step in your scan. Here you can use tools like the “Selective Color” to make adjustments to repair problems with the original photograph that show up in the scan. You may want to “de-vintage” your images, using the Selective Color tool (in Photoshop: Image > Adjustments > Selective Color) and adjusting certain color and value ranges selectively.
In this example, you can see how we set our “colors” sample to “Blacks,” then increased black and removed some of the blue haze from the darks in the image. We can also use this same tool to adjust the apparent white balance of the image, removing the yellow cast in the highlights and midtones.
Another option is to open the file in Lightroom, RAW Therapee, or Adobe Camera Raw (shown above.) If you have Photoshop, you can open any photo in camera raw by going to File > Open As and opening your scan as a Raw file. This can allow you to set a more accurate white point than the Selective Color tool, and also allows you the wealth of fairly complex tools in Camera Raw (or other comparable programs.)
Lots of additional improvements can be made after the scan to make the image perfect. For help getting your image to look as good as possible, check out our previous how-tos on adjusting contrast like a pro, adjusting color like a pro, how to use a histogram, and how to use freeware Raw Therapee to adjust Raw files (as well as scans). You may also be interested in the easy How-to Geek method on removing dust and scratches from scans.
Are you a scanner master and think you have some great advice to share? Let us know in the comments, or send your thoughts or questions to [email protected]. They may be featured in a future How-To Geek Graphics article.
Image Credits: Photos of the author’s family, names and copyright information withheld. Any reuse of these images is a violation of the photographer’s copyright and intergalactic law.
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