Digitize old photos on your smartphone with Google PhotoScan

We may take thousands of photos these days but we all know that an old photo can turn more heads than what you ate for breakfast this morning. Google now lets you digitize your old photos with a special app called PhotoScan, currently available only for Android and iOS.

Hold your phone above the photo you wish to digitize, hover the camera over the points marked on the screen, and the app will kick in. It will detect edges, straighten the image, rotate said image to the correct orientation, and remove any glare automatically.

Just like that, you’ll have a semi-perfect digital copy of the old photo on your smartphone. If you’ve been actively using Google Photos as well, the digitized photos will all be uploaded to the cloud, giving you access to the images anytime you want.

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Apart from PhotoScan, Google will also be introducing three new editing tools to Google Photos. The first is a new and improved auto enhance feature.

Once you’ve opened up a photo and tapped on the Pencil icon, you’ll notice an Auto option found at the bottom of the screen. This is the auto enhance feature, and it will make various enhancements to your photo such as balancing saturation and exposure.

Additionally, Google has implemented 12 new styles into Google Photos. This feature edits your photo according to its brightness, darkness, warmth, or saturation before applying the style onto it.

Both the auto enhance feature and the new styles rely on machine learning.