Short answer: the best way to digitise old photos at home is a flatbed scanner at 600 DPI, in colour mode, with every “auto-enhance” option switched off. No scanner? Use your phone in soft, even light, held parallel to the print. Then restore the scans with AI and back them up in two places. Here’s the full method.
Scanner vs phone: which to use
A flatbed scanner gives the best, most consistent results — flat, evenly lit, distortion-free, and high resolution. Even a cheap or old scanner beats a phone for flat prints. A phone camera is the practical alternative and is perfectly good if you follow the rules below; it’s also the only realistic option for framed photos you can’t remove.
Scanning the right way
- Resolution: 600 DPI for standard prints, 1200 DPI for small ones.
- Mode: colour, even for black-and-white photos — it captures more tonal detail.
- File type: TIFF if you have the space, otherwise JPEG at 95+ quality.
- Turn OFF: auto-tone, auto-colour, sharpening and dust-removal (Digital ICE). These “improvements” lock in artefacts and interfere with proper restoration later.
- Clean the scanner glass and the photo gently before scanning — a microfibre cloth, no liquids on the print.
Photographing a print with your phone
If a scanner isn’t available, you can still get a usable copy:
- Lay the print on a flat, dark, matte surface.
- Use soft, even side-light — north-facing window light through a curtain is ideal. No flash.
- Hold the phone parallel to the print, directly above it, and fill the frame.
- Avoid casting your own shadow; use the timer or a tripod if you can.
- Crop to the photo and upload the un-edited original — don’t apply phone filters.
After scanning: restore, don’t just store
A raw scan preserves the photo exactly as it is today — including the fading, scratches and yellowing. Digitising buys you the chance to fix all of that. Run each scan through AI restoration to repair damage and recover detail, upscale it for large prints, and optionally colourise black-and-white photos. Keep both versions — the untouched scan as the historical record, and the restored version for sharing and printing.
Back it up — properly
Digitising only protects your photos if the files survive. Use the simple 3-2-1 idea:
- 3 copies of each photo,
- on 2 different types of storage (e.g. your computer and an external drive),
- with 1 copy off-site (a cloud service, or a drive at a relative’s house).
Where to start
Pick ten photos, scan them at 600 DPI, and run them through Photo Repair Lab with your 20 free credits. Once you see the difference restoration makes, you’ll want to digitise the rest. For copying and reprinting your scans, see where to get copies of old photos made.