How to shoot old prints with your phone
Daylight, no flash, straight from above. Seven steps to a printed photo that looks good on screen.
3 min read
No scanner needed. Any phone from the last few years photographs a printed picture well enough for a film, if you do it right. The whole thing takes a minute per photo.
Seven steps
- Take the print out of the album if you can. If it is stuck behind plastic, open the page flat and shoot through the plastic at a slight angle so you do not catch a reflection.
- Lay it on a dark surface near a window, in daylight, out of direct sun.
- Turn the flash off. Flash puts a white blob in the middle.
- Hold the phone straight above the print, parallel to it. Your shadow should not fall on it.
- Fill the frame with the print but leave a little margin. We crop afterwards.
- Tap the face on screen to set focus, and wait a second before pressing.
- Shoot twice. Keep the sharper one.
If you have a scanner app
Google Photos and the Notes app on iPhone can scan documents and remove glare. That works on prints too. Not required, but it saves a step.
Faded prints
Do not fix colours yourself. Upload as is. Motion hides a lot, and faded colour is part of what makes an old photo feel old.
Very small prints
Passport photos or tiny prints from the sixties: shoot as close as the phone allows without losing focus. If the face is clear, that is enough.
What to upload
The file as it came out of the camera, not compressed through WhatsApp. Email it to yourself, AirDrop it, or upload straight from the phone on the site.