Recently, I scanned some photos from old albums using Google PhotoScan. You take multiple pictures of each photo, and the program stitches them together to even out lightning and remove glares. Afterward, you can easily select corners for automatic perspective correction and cropping. The process overall is quite simple and fast, and has the advantage of not requiring to take pictures out of old albums.
However, it has downsides: My phone’s camera is not as good as my proper camera, there is no control over white balance (so if you’re scanning in a room with warm light, it creates a tint). And there are no settings to control the quality.
Is there some open-source alternative that allows me to take multiple photos, stitch them together and properly adjust perspective and crop? My first thought was Hugin, but IIRC its model assumes the camera is stationary.
Microsoft made a free stitching program called Image Composite Editor (ICE). I use it a lot for stitching images and it is surprising good. Of course you need a Windows computer. It tends to match exposure between shots if that is not done perfectly by the camera.
Interestingly (or not), I scoured the internet yesterday, looking for a decent photo scanning app. After trying about three others, I settled on Google’s PhotoScan. It makes it easy to adjust the corners, and to eliminate the glare of external lighting.
I also tried doing it on my printer/scanner, but it made the image the size of an 8x10, with most of it being blank space and the actual scanned image being just in one corner. Also, it made it a pdf, which I would have to turn around and convert.
Any scanner program worth a damn will let you choose the area to scan, as well as rotate and flip it. Usually you just have to drag with the mouse on the preview. Same thing for the output format. There should be options for choosing the resolution (in dpi) and file type (typically jpg, png, tiff and pdf are offered).
It is a pretty old printer. AFAIK, I can just put the photo on the scanner bed, choose color or B&W, and tell it to scan. I don’t see any options for that other stuff.
In fact, the printer is so old that the app no longer claims it is a supported model, but it still works.