How to Take a Good Picture of an Old Photo With Your Phone

Let us settle this first, because it stops so many people. You do not need a scanner, a scanning app, or any special equipment. A phone picture of your old photo, taken with a little care, is what most of our customers send. It is our normal starting point, not a shortcut.

Better still, the original never leaves your hands. No shipping, no worry, no waiting on the mail. Ten minutes at the kitchen table and your photo is on its way to an artist.

Light does most of the work, so start there.

• Turn the flash off. Flash bounces off the photo and leaves a white hot spot, often right over a face. This is the single most common mistake we see.
• Use daylight from a window. A bright room in the daytime is perfect. Set the photo on a table near a window, but not in a patch of direct sun.
• Watch for shadows. Do not lean between the light and the photo, and switch off any lamp you can see reflected in the print.

Set the photo on a plain, flat surface, like a clean table or a solid-colored cloth. Then hold your phone directly above it, flat and level, so the phone faces the photo squarely rather than at an angle.

Move close enough that the photo fills most of the screen. This is where the detail comes from. A photo shot from across the table becomes a small, fuzzy rectangle. A photo that fills the frame keeps every face crisp. A little table showing around the edges is fine, and our artists will crop it away.

If the photo curls, do not fight it or press it under anything heavy in a hurry. A gentle curl photographs fine, and our artists take care of the rest.

A tiny wobble is enough to soften every face, so give your hands some help. Rest both elbows on the table. Hold the phone with two hands. Breathe out, hold still, and tap.

Two tricks make this even easier. Use the volume button to take the picture instead of tapping the screen, or set the camera timer to 3 seconds so the phone shoots after your hand has settled. Then take three pictures, not one, and send the clearest. The pictures cost nothing, and one of the three is always steadier than the rest.

Framed photos can be photographed right through the glass. Turn the flash off, then watch the glass on your screen. If you can see a window, a lamp, or your own outline, move a step to the side until the reflection slides off the faces. Never pry a photo off glass it has stuck to, and never peel one out of a glued album page. Both can tear the image beyond saving.

Photograph album pages just as they are, one photo at a time, filling the frame with each. Our artists remove the page background by hand. If your only copy is a framed photo, an album page, a clipping, or another photo of a photo, our page on restoring a picture of a picture has honest answers about what can be rebuilt.

If you already own a flatbed scanner and feel comfortable with it, scan at 300 DPI or more. That is a wonderful source, and there is no need to go hunting for higher numbers.

But do not buy a scanner for this. Any phone from the past ten years captures plenty of detail when the photo fills the frame. What limits an old photo is almost never the phone. It is glare, bad light, or standing too far away, and the steps above take care of all three.

This one surprises people. Once you have a clear picture, stop. Do not brighten it, do not sharpen it, and do not run it through a filter or an auto-enhance button. Those tools smear away the fine grain our artists use to rebuild your photo by hand. The untouched picture, straight off your phone, is exactly what they want.

From there it is simple. Upload the picture, and your first proof usually arrives in 1 to 3 days, with a 24-hour rush available when you need it sooner. Prices start at $38, revisions are free, and everything is backed by a 30-day money-back guarantee. If we cannot restore your photo, you do not pay. Our step-by-step tutorial shows exactly how ordering works, and our before and after gallery shows what a simple phone picture can become.