Scanning Photos with Photomyne

Does the thought of scanning photos put your knickers in a twist? Because you don’t have a scanner and the right kind of software? Because it’s so expensive to pay a company to scan them?

Then, I have an amazing alternative for you.

Amazing. Amazing. A–MA–ZING! Totally. Oh. And have I mentioned amazing?

Photomyne is a an amazing free app for mobile phones that you can use to scan paper photos.

Take those old photos out of those dusty boxes in the attic or at the bottom of your closet. Spread several of them on a table. Open Photomyne and start scanning. In less that a minute, you have a digital version of those pictures taken long ago!

Or, open a photo album. Leave the pictures in the plastic pages and scan them with Photomyne.

Okay. Lemme show you what I did.

Back when I was married in the Mesozoic Era, scrapbooking was lots different than in today’s world. Scrapbook pages weren’t fancy. A sticker here. One over there.

When I got married, I put pictures of our wedding in a binder and started a chronology of our life together.

For this blog post, I took snapshots of the first few pages in the first family binder (I’ve got several binders!) so that you could see where I was getting my photos.

Next, I scanned the pictures on those pages using Photomyne. In less than one minute, I scanned all of the pictures on all 3 pages in my binder!

(BTW. Please disregard my goony bangs in these pictures! They were too long that so they parted in the middle. I don’t like it when my bangs do that!)

You’ll notice in the picture below that there are wavy lines radiating from my head. Contrary to popular belief, that’s not my aura.

I didn’t take that picture out of the plastic page when I scanned it. The plastic is so old that it is warped. And that warping affected the quality of the scanned photo. Hence the wavy lines around my head.

(So here’s a hint. If the plastic page cover is old and wavy, take the picture out. Also, review the pictures before scanning more to make sure they are good.)

(In the picture below, my bangs are trimmed. Trimmed too short! Boy, I sure have lots of issues with my bangs. It seems like I can never win.)

Some of the pictures in the binder were taken by a professional photographer. Some were taken with a Polaroid camera. Some of the colored ones have faded more than others. But they are all 46 years old. This should give you a good idea how your similar pictures would turn out. (None of these pictures were edited.)

Okay. Let’s talk about some nitty gritty details.

• Photomyne works on both iOS and Android phones.
• You can scan whole photo album pages or groups of photos placed on a table.
• Photomyne detects each picture’s boundary so each picture is saved separately.
• Pictures that are sideways will be rotated 90 degrees when saved.
• Photomyne restores faded color photos to their original brightness (most of the time).
• Photos are save to albums on your cellphone. You can add a title and date to the album, a location, people’s names, and even an audio recording!
• You can title and date your photos, crop them, rotate them, enhance their color, and rearrange them in the album.
• You can share the photo through e-mail, Facebook, Messenger, Twitter, and even upload them to your Google Drive.
• And much, much, more!

You can also colorize black and white photos. Here’s one of mine that I colorized.

I think that the skin tones turned out accurate. If my memory serves me right, the color of my husband’s suit is correct (blue) and the design on his shirt was blue.

However. My dress was bright lemon yellow with an orange trim and orange buttons. Do you see any of those colors? Methinks not.

So if you want to colorize old photos where nobody knows what the colors were, then using Photomyne should be just fine. But if you want the correct color, colorizing black and white photos in Photomyne might not work too well for you. (But then scanning photos on a flatbed scanner might not give correct colors either. Voice of experience here, folks.)

You don’t have to be a Steve Jobs to use this app. Trust me. If you’ve got a smidgeon of tech experience, you should be just fine. In fact, I predict that you already have the most critical scanning skill — tapping on your phone.

If you’re rather nervous, invite one of your grandkids over to download the app for you. Spend some time together laughing at old pictures of you . . . er . . . I mean time learning how to use the app. (Learning how to scan will take but a moment. But the laughing, well, that could last for a while . . .)

Now. Start scanning photos!

Once you’ve scanned your pictures, what can you do with them? Lots! You can use them in a digital picture frame, create a photo book (using a company like Shutterfly), put them on mugs, magnets, totes, or calendars, e-mail them to family members, print on t-shirts for a family reunion, or use on your Christmas cards.

I’m so excited about scanning photos with Photomyne. I’ll scan all of them in my family albums, make a movie out of them, burn it to a DVD, and give a copy to each of the kids for Christmas. (Shhh! Don’t tell them!)

So! Go get Photomyne. Now! Before something bad happens to your old photos. Like in the video below.