How to Scan Old Photos With Your iPhone (No Glare, Straight, Right Dates)
You can scan old photos with nothing but an iPhone, and the results are good enough to print again at the original size. The camera is not the hard part. Glare, a crooked angle, and a shadow from your own hand ruin more scans than resolution ever will. This guide covers the setup that avoids all three, three ways to capture a print (the Camera app, the Notes scanner, and Scanner App's Photo mode), and what to do afterwards so that a box of 1980s prints ends up as photos with the right dates in your library, not a pile of files called IMG_4471.
The short version
- Light decides the result. Bright, indirect daylight from the side, no flash, no ceiling lamp straight above. Glossy prints reflect anything in front of them.
- Hold the phone parallel to the print and fill the frame. Edge detection handles the rest of the straightening.
- Three ways to capture: the Camera app plus a crop, the Notes scanner with the Photo filter, or Scanner App's Photo color mode, which detects the edges, flattens the angle, and exports a JPG you can save to Photos.
- Fix the date afterwards in Photos with Adjust Date and Time, so a 1987 photo sits in 1987 and not on the day you scanned it.
- Scan the back too when it has handwriting on it. The note is often worth as much as the photo.
Before you scan: the ten-minute setup
A good setup turns a hundred prints into an evening's job instead of a week of reshoots.
- Find the right light. A table next to a window on a bright, overcast day is ideal: even light, no hard shadows. Avoid direct sun and avoid the ceiling light straight above you, which is exactly where glossy prints reflect. In the evening, two lamps placed left and right at an angle work better than one overhead.
- Turn off the flash. A flash on a glossy print is a white blob in the middle of someone's face.
- Use a dark, matte background. A dark tablecloth or a sheet of black card gives edge detection a clean border to find.
- Take prints out of plastic sleeves when you safely can. Sleeves add a second reflective layer. If a print is stuck to an old self-adhesive album page, do not force it; scan it in place and tilt the phone slightly to move the glare off the picture.
- Clean the lens and the print. Wipe the camera lens, and brush dust off prints gently with a dry microfiber cloth. Never use anything wet on old photos.
- Flatten curled prints under a heavy book for a day before scanning, or hold the corners down with coins outside the photo edges.
How much quality does an iPhone scan give you?
More than you need. A classic 6 x 4 inch print scanned at 300 dots per inch, the usual standard for printing, is 1800 x 1200 pixels, about 2 megapixels. Any recent iPhone camera, with the print filling most of the frame, captures several times that. Old prints are often softer than the camera anyway, so what shows up in the result is the photo's own grain and fading, not a lack of pixels. The one thing to avoid is standing far back and zooming in: move the phone closer instead.
Method 1: the Camera app and a crop
- Turn on the grid in Settings, Camera, Grid. It helps you keep the phone square to the print.
- Hold the iPhone directly above the photo, parallel to the table, and fill the frame with a little border around the print.
- Tap to focus on the photo, then take the shot.
- Open it in Photos, tap Edit, then Crop. Photos often straightens automatically; drag the corners to the edge of the print.
It is free and it keeps full camera quality. The downside is that every photo needs a manual crop, and if the phone was even slightly tilted, the print comes out as a trapezoid that crop alone cannot fix.
Method 2: the Notes scanner with the Photo filter
Apple's document scanner in Notes finds the edges of whatever you point it at and flattens the angle, which solves the trapezoid problem. Open a note, tap the camera button, choose Scan Documents, and switch the filter to Photo so it keeps the colors instead of turning the print into a high-contrast document. The catch is where the result ends up: inside a note, as a document, which is fine for a family history file and awkward when what you want is the photo back in your Photos library next to your other pictures.
Method 3: Scanner App's Photo mode
Scanner App gives you the edge detection of a document scanner and hands you an ordinary image file at the end.
- Open Scanner App, tap New Document, and choose Scan with Camera.
- Point the camera at the print. The app finds the four edges and flattens the angle, so a slightly tilted phone still gives a straight rectangle.
- Tap Color and choose Photo. Color, B/W, and Grayscale are tuned for paper documents and push the contrast; Photo keeps skin tones and the soft colors of an old print as they are.
- Use Crop if you want to trim a white border or the edge of an album page.
- Export as JPG, then tap Save Image in the share sheet to put it in Photos.
For a whole album, scan several prints in one session; each capture becomes its own page, and you export them all at the end. If you would rather keep a set together as one file, for example the photos from a single family event for a relative, export them as a PDF instead; how that works is in how to scan multiple pages into one PDF. Everything runs on the iPhone, with no account and no upload. More on the scanner itself is on the document scanner page.
After scanning: dates, captions, and albums
A scanned photo carries the date you scanned it. Five minutes of fixing makes the difference between a library and a heap.
- Fix the date. Open the photo in Photos, swipe up or tap the info button, and tap Adjust next to the date. Set the year and month you know; an exact day does not matter. You can select several photos from the same event and adjust them together from the More menu.
- Add a caption. In the same info panel, tap Add a Caption and write who is in the picture and where. Captions are searchable in Photos, so "Grandma Izmir 1978" finds it in ten years.
- Put them in an album, one per box or per decade, so the scans do not dissolve into the rest of your library.
- Scan the back when there is writing on it and keep it right after the front, or add the text to the caption.
- Try Enhance once. In Edit, the auto-enhance button can lift a faded print. Compare before and after; on some prints it overdoes the contrast.
If you scan a lot, a naming habit helps even for PDFs and files you keep outside Photos; how to organize scanned documents covers folders and names that still make sense years later.
What a phone does not do well
Be honest about the limits. Slides and film negatives need light shining through them, not onto them, and a phone scan of a negative also needs its colors inverted; a lab or a film scanner gives far better results. Very large prints and framed photos behind glass reflect so much that it is often easier to take them out of the frame first. And a phone scan will not repair a torn or badly faded print; it preserves it as it is, which is still worth doing before it fades further.
Quick answers
How do I scan old photos with my iPhone?
Put the print on a dark table next to a window, turn off the flash, hold the phone parallel to the photo, and capture it with a scanner that detects edges, such as the Notes scanner with the Photo filter or Scanner App in Photo mode. Then save it to Photos and fix the date.
How do I avoid glare when scanning photos with a phone?
Use indirect light from the side, not a lamp straight above, turn off the flash, and take prints out of plastic sleeves. If glare remains, tilt the phone slightly and let edge detection straighten the result.
Is an iPhone good enough to scan photos?
Yes, for prints. A 6 x 4 inch print at 300 dpi is about 2 megapixels, well below what a current iPhone camera captures when the print fills the frame.
Can I scan photos with the iPhone Notes app?
Yes. Use Scan Documents and switch the filter to Photo. The scan is stored inside the note as a document, which is less convenient if you want it in your Photos library.
How do I change the date on a scanned photo on iPhone?
Open the photo in Photos, swipe up or tap the info button, tap Adjust next to the date, and set the original date.
Can I scan negatives or slides with an iPhone?
Only roughly. They need a light source behind them and the colors of negatives must be inverted. A lab or film scanner gives much better results.
Save the box before it fades further
A window, a dark tablecloth, and an evening are enough for a shoebox of prints. Download Scanner App, free to download, and scan every print straight, in Photo mode, and into your library.