Turn a photo of a page into a scan
A photograph of a document is grey, lit from one side and a degree off square. This straightens it, levels the lighting so the paper comes out white, and saves it as a PDF — optionally with the text behind it so the scan is searchable.
- Processed on your device
- No upload, no waiting
- No signup, no watermark
How it works
Add your photos
One page or many — they become the pages of one PDF, in the order you added them.
Watch it clean up
The skew is measured and removed, and the paper behind the ink is estimated and lifted to white, which is what makes a photograph stop looking like one.
Download the PDF
Ask for a text layer and the words are read and laid invisibly over the page, so the scan can be searched and copied from.
Frequently asked questions
What does it actually change?
Three things. The skew: the angle of the text is measured across the whole page and removed, so the lines are level. The lighting: the brightness of the paper behind the ink is estimated in patches and lifted to a uniform white, which removes the fall-off towards one edge and the shadow of your hand. And the contrast: the ink is darkened against that white. What it does not do is invent anything — nothing is sharpened into existence.
Can it make the scan searchable?
Yes. Switch on the text layer and every word is read and placed invisibly over the picture where it appears, so Ctrl+F finds it and you can select and copy from the PDF. The page still looks exactly like the photograph; the text is never painted, only made selectable.
Is my photo uploaded?
No. The cleaning and the reading both run in your browser, and the PDF is written there too. Nothing is sent anywhere.
Should I crop to the page first?
It helps. The paper estimate works best when most of the frame is paper, so a photo with a dark desk around the edges comes out better if you crop it down first. The skew measurement deliberately ignores the outer margins, so a little background is not a problem.
Will it fix a photo taken at an angle?
It removes rotation — a page a few degrees off square is set level. It does not correct perspective, so a page photographed from the side, with one edge longer than the other, stays that shape. Shooting from directly above is worth the extra second.
Colour or black and white?
Colour is kept, with the paper whitened behind it — so a stamp, a signature in blue ink or a highlighted line stays the colour it was. That is usually what you want from a document; it is not a black-and-white fax.
How big will the PDF be?
Each page is stored as a JPEG sized for reading rather than at the camera's full resolution, so a phone photo that was 4 MB typically lands under 1 MB a page with no visible loss at 100%.
Good to know: Perspective is not corrected: a page photographed from an angle keeps its trapezoid shape, and only the rotation is fixed. A page with a heavy fold or a strong curve near the spine will still curve. The text layer, where you ask for one, carries the same caveats as any OCR — and Chinese, Japanese and Korean words are counted rather than written, because no font for them is bundled.