Google today launched a new app called PhotoScan, which is designed to make it easy to scan printed photographs using your iPhone's camera.

PhotoScan instructs users to take four separate quick images of a printed photo, stitching them together to create a perfect high-resolution digital copy. Google's multi-image capture method eliminates issues that normally plague digital photos of print photographs, including glare and distortion.


Automatic edge detection crops photos to the correct size, and PhotoScan is also able to fix orientation and perspective for a clean-looking scan.

PhotoScan gets you great looking digital copies in seconds - it detects edges, straightens the image, rotates it to the correct orientation, and removes glare. Scanned photos can be saved in one tap to Google Photos to be organized, searchable, shared, and safely backed up at high quality--for free.

Alongside PhotoScan, Google is also updating Google Photos with improved auto enhance, new looks, and more advanced editing tools for improving images.

PhotoScan can be downloaded from the App Store for free. [Direct Link]

Tag: Google

Top Rated Comments

SBlue1 Avatar
83 months ago
Whoa, was looking for something like this forever. Wish it was not from Google though. Who knows what they do with all the data and faces the app recognises.
Score: 20 Votes (Like | Disagree)
JGIGS Avatar
83 months ago
Whoa, was looking for something like this forever. Wish it was not from Google though. Who knows what they do with all the data and faces the app recognises.
Very useful tool.. bummer it is from Google. Will have to suck it up and download it though as this is pretty cool.
I love the constant google paranoia this group seems to hold on to.

What could they really do with pictures of peoples faces that would be so harmful? Unless they are stealing my identity and all my money, which I can't see happening with a photo, do I care that much? Besides most people have there current photos all over the net already anyway so....
Score: 13 Votes (Like | Disagree)
hellosil Avatar
83 months ago
I love the constant google paranoia this group seems to hold on to.

What could they really do with pictures of peoples faces that would be so harmful? Unless they are stealing my identity and all my money, which I can't see happening with a photo, do I care that much? Besides most people have there current photos all over the net already anyway so....
What if someone from Google came knocking at your door, and asked you if he could meticulously go through your physical photo albums, writing down every detail in the photos like who you are with, what emotion you shared with these people, what you own, etc.,

connecting that to the information collected from the photo albums of those people, connecting that data to other data they collected while you visited friends, family and public places, what you did there etc, for the sake of showing you ads.

Would you like that?
Score: 12 Votes (Like | Disagree)
Mad Mac Maniac Avatar
83 months ago
Can you add meta data like date and location?
Score: 9 Votes (Like | Disagree)
pcmacgamer Avatar
83 months ago
Great so Google can now datamine photos of people from times before the internet exsisted.
[doublepost=1479247308][/doublepost]
What could they really do with pictures of peoples faces that would be so harmful? Unless they are stealing my identity and all my money, which I can't see happening with a photo, do I care that much? Besides most people have there current photos all over the net already anyway so....
They could do a lot of things perhaps build a giant database of individuals and use it to track people even more than they already do. The possibilities are endless.

With that who cares mentality why have locks on our doors and shades on our windows. Who cares what could happen :rolleyes:. Who needs privacy!
Score: 8 Votes (Like | Disagree)
cmwade77 Avatar
83 months ago
What if someone from Google came knocking at your door, and asked you if he could meticulously go through your physical photo albums, writing down every detail in the photos like who you are with, what emotion you shared with these people, what you own, etc.,

connecting that to the information collected from the photo albums of those people, connecting that data to other data they collected while you visited friends, family and public places, what you did there etc, for the sake of showing you ads.

Would you like that?
There is a difference here, one is google coming and asking, the second is you volunteering with the full knowledge of what they intend to do with the photos. Say what you will, but Google's TOS is very easy to understand and is not hidden in legalese that you need a lawyer to decipher (which is what most other companies, including Apple does). So to me the choices are let go of privacy in favor of some amazing features to a company that tells me upfront that I am abandoning my privacy and exactly what they can and cannot do with my information (Google) or trust that the legalese is the same as the rhetoric that the CEO and other executives spew that my private information will remain private and that there isn't something lurking in the TOS that would change that (Apple and many others). Personally, I prefer the one that is upfront and honest and makes it easy for me to understand what is going on.
Score: 6 Votes (Like | Disagree)

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