How to scan photos
with your phone.

For most family prints, yes. The Library of Congress suggests 300 dpi for 6 × 4 and 7 × 5 inch prints, and 400 or 600 dpi if you might enlarge them to 10 × 8 inches or more. At 300 dpi, a 6 × 4 inch print needs 1,800 × 1,200 pixels, about 2 megapixels.

A 12-megapixel phone photo is about 4,000 × 3,000 pixels. If a 6 × 4 inch print fills the frame from side to side, that works out at roughly 670 pixels per inch; if it fills two-thirds of the width, still about 450. Apple says recent iPhones shoot 24 megapixels by default on supported models, which leaves even more room.

Pixels aren’t the whole story. A flatbed scanner lights every part of a print evenly and never tilts; a phone depends on your light, your focus and your hands. Archives use both: FADGI, the US federal digitising guidelines, lists digital cameras alongside flatbeds as recommended tools for photographs, and the Smithsonian Institution Archives notes that photographing an item is one way to digitise it, especially when it is very fragile. Use your phone for albums, fragile prints and visits to relatives, and a flatbed for prints you would like to enlarge.

Other scanner apps exist, many of them paid. Whichever you try, scan one print first and check its pixel dimensions in the photo’s details before you do a hundred.

Glare is light bouncing off the glossy surface of a print straight into the lens. It depends on angles, so most of it can be fixed before you press the button.

Old albums hold many family photos, and some are hard on them. The Library of Congress advises avoiding albums with coloured, “magnetic” or sticky self-adhesive pages, and keeping tape and glue off photographs altogether.

Don’t prise prints off. The Smithsonian Institution Archives suggests noting the names, dates and places written on each album page, and taking a picture of every page, before you remove anything, because a print stuck to the page can tear or split into layers. Photograph each page as it is first, since the layout and handwritten captions are part of the record. Then photograph each print where it sits, with the light from the side.

Prints held by photo corners can usually be freed, the Smithsonian’s paper conservator says, by very carefully slitting the fold of each corner with a thin, flat tool. A framed print that won’t come out easily can be photographed through the glass, lit from the side. Prints stuck together are a job for a conservator, not water: in the UK, Icon, the Institute of Conservation, lists accredited conservators who specialise in photographs.

Our guides to organising family photos, labelling old photos and storing old photos go further. The Smithsonian Institution Archives’ advice on digital copies is short: “Multiple copies are wise. Don’t rely only on a photo-sharing service online.”

The free Ancestorii app for iPhone and Android is built for photos on your phone. Add up to 10 scans from your photo library to a memory, with a few lines about what they show, and it appears in a private feed that only the family members you invite can see. Relatives can react, comment and add their own version of the moment.

On the website, the family Library takes up to 20 uploads at a time and converts iPhone HEIC photos to JPEG automatically, and family photo albums let everyone add a date, the story and a voice note to each scan. The Free plan includes 1 GB for the whole family, with files up to 20 MB, which suits phone scans; Premium is £3.99 a month per family for 100 GB. Keep your own backup too: Ancestorii is where the family sees the photos and adds what they know.