PhotoScan by Google Photos

What PhotoScan does

PhotoScan by Google Photos turns printed photographs into digital copies using your Android phone’s camera. It is aimed at anyone sorting family albums, preserving older prints, or making paper photos easier to store and share. Instead of taking one ordinary picture, the app guides you through several capture points and combines them into a single scan.

Tools for cleaner scans

• Captures multiple views of a print to reduce glare and bright reflections.
• Detects the photo’s edges and crops away much of the surrounding surface.
• Straightens images taken at an angle, helping the final scan look rectangular.
• Corrects orientation so scanned photos are easier to review and organise.

Who it suits

This is a practical choice for casual archiving rather than detailed document work. The guided process keeps the number of controls low, so you can scan a batch of snapshots without learning a complicated editing workflow. It is especially useful for glossy prints, where a single phone photograph can show distracting reflections. Results still depend on the condition of the original, the available light, and how steadily you follow the capture guide.

At a glance

PhotoScan is listed in the Photography category and is developed by Google LLC. Its rating is about 4.1 out of 5 from 204,069 reviews, with 50,000,000+ installs. The app works best when you want a quick, more presentable digital version of a physical print, while users needing very high-resolution archival scans may still prefer dedicated scanning hardware.