The passage of time, humidity, animals, and a combination of these factors can destroy physical photographs sooner than we imagine. Scanning those photos one by one is tedious and time-consuming, which leads to the classic trick of taking photos of photos. Obviously, that yields saturated, blurred, out-of-focus results, but with the new Google PhotoScan app, scanning photographs only takes a couple of seconds.
The number of personal photos that ended up in the trash victims of humidity is chilling. Lost memories, impossible to recover. Weddings, quinceañeras, baptisms… of course I wasn't in all the photos, but those little windows to the past become too fragile when not cared for properly. Now think about the photos that are about to share that same fate in your home. I wouldn't recommend buying a scanner unless it's a fast and dedicated model, rather than those multifunction options that, well… stink. Something I've seen very often is taking photos of photos, but the final result is always inferior to a real scan. Current technology should respond to that demand somehow, which leads us to Google PhotoScan.
At first glance, Google PhotoScan lets us take a much more precise and controlled photo of those physical photos, and by automatically adjusting certain aspects like edge cropping and perspective correction, the final image will be of a quality very similar to a scan. PhotoScan uses a coordinate system, four reference points that we must aim at with the smartphone camera. The new digitized image is saved on the device and in Google Photos, making it easier to share.
Google PhotoScan has compatible versions for Android (from version 5.0) and iOS (8.1 or higher). In both cases it's the initial build, so all interested parties will probably discover some sharp edges during its execution, but the concept is excellent. I imagine that a person with hundreds of photos will find Google PhotoScan equally frustrating... however, the traditional method is worse.
