PhotoScan, the new app from Google that digitizes your old photos

Physical photo albums are becoming a relic of the past. We’re seeing less and less of these giant books that hold an entire life-worth of photos. The digitization of photos has caused us to depend less on paper photos and this means we rarely even visit stores to develop photos anymore. However, many of us still have tons of these classic photos packed up and stored away so that time doesn’t ruin them. But Google  —always Google— has discoverd a simple way to digitize photos and its name is PhotoScan.

Google wants to make sure you don’t ever lose your lifelong photos and they want to make the digitization process easy enough for anyone to be able to do it without the need for a scanner. For this reason, PhotoScan is an extremely simple app to use. Nowadays, we talk about the simplicity of apps all the time, but in this case we really do mean it. PhotoScan was created in a way that it’s simplicity is its greatest feature. No matter how poorly the photograph is conserved, PhotoScan takes care of saving it in the best state possible. At least in theory.

You have to follow a series of steps in order for PhotoScan to do its magic. First, you have to frame the photo you want to “scan.” Then, you’ll take up to five different pictures using the original photo as a reference: first with the photo inside the frame, and the following ones using four circles as reference points that you have to aim at. A few seconds later, you’ll have your photo scanned and read in your gallery like in  Google Photos. The entire process takes less than one minute. 

PhotoScan takes care of making different adjustments automatically. The app corrects any problems it finds, rotates the photo if necessary, gets rid of annoying glares, etc. Ultimately, PhotoScan does everything possible to help you digitize your memories quickly and easily. The only problem is that it can’t perform miracles if you don’t have optimal conditions. This means you need, above all, lots of light. It’s also best to take photos out of their frames to avoid any other problems.

This new free app from Google is just getting off the ground, so I’m sure that the scanning process will only improve as time goes on. Here we have an app that makes the dreaded and time-consuming process of moving your photos to a hard drive or storing them in the cloud (this is why Google Photos is right in the name) a piece of cake. PhotoScan is an intuitive and simple tool that you shouldn’t think twice about trying out.

PhotoScan for Android on Uptodown  [APK] | Download