Digitizing old photos properly
Good restoration starts with a good scan. Scanner settings that matter, a phone technique that rivals one, and the mistakes that ruin either method.
Digitization is the step everyone rushes and nobody should: whatever the scan misses, no restoration can use. The comforting truth is that a good scan requires no expensive equipment — a modest flatbed scanner or a phone handled with intention both capture more than enough for high-quality restoration. What separates a good scan from a wasted one is technique, and the technique takes five minutes to learn.
Phone method — done properly
Find flat, diffuse daylight
Near a window on an overcast day is ideal. Never use flash — it bounces off the print as a white hotspot — and avoid mixed light from a lamp plus a window.
Lay the photo flat and shoot straight down
Put the print on a plain dark surface. Hold the phone directly above, parallel to the print — a tilted camera turns rectangles into trapezoids and softens one edge.
Kill the glare
Glossy prints mirror the room. Shift your position until no window or bright wall reflects in the print, and make sure your own shadow is not falling across it.
Fill the frame and focus on the print
Move close so the photo fills most of the frame, tap the screen to focus on the print itself, hold still, and take three shots — the sharpest wins.
Leave the image alone
No filters, no auto-enhance, no cropping tight to the image edge. Send the file at full resolution — messengers that compress photos quietly destroy scan quality.
Scanner method — settings that matter
- Clean the glass first; one hair shows up on every scan
- 600 DPI for prints up to postcard size, 300 DPI minimum above that
- Color mode even for black-and-white prints — it captures the stains and toning restoration needs to read
- All automatic corrections off: dust removal, sharpening, backlight fix
- TIFF or maximum-quality JPEG as output
- Scan slightly beyond the print’s edges
- For photos stuck in albums: scan the whole page rather than tearing prints out
Digitizing questions
Is a phone photo really good enough for restoration?
A careful one, yes — daylight, no glare, straight-on, full resolution. A flatbed scanner still wins on consistency and on glossy or curled prints, but the gap is technique more than hardware.
What about photos glued into old albums?
Do not peel them out — glued prints tear, and black-paper albums are part of the artifact. Scan or photograph the full page; individual photos are cropped out digitally.
Should I scan the back of photos too?
When anything is written there, absolutely. Names, dates and studio stamps on the reverse are archive gold, and future generations will not guess what you did not record.
Do higher DPI numbers always mean better scans?
Only up to the detail the print actually holds — beyond roughly 600 DPI for ordinary prints you mostly record paper texture in bigger files. Resolution is the floor you cannot fix later, not a score to maximize.
Scanned it? Now restore it
Upload your scan and see the restored photo in about a minute — payment only after you approve the result.
Epoha is in early access: the restoration model is not connected yet, so the tool currently shows how the flow works. The price and the pay-after-you-see-it promise apply once it opens.