Photos from the past, meet scanner from the future

Google Photos is a home for all your photos and videos, but what about those old prints that are some of your most treasured memories? Such as photos of grandma when she was young, your childhood pet, and that hairstyle you wish you could forget.

We all have those old albums and boxes of photos, but we don’t take the time to digitize them because it’s just too hard to get it right. We don’t want to mail away our original copy, buying a scanner is costly and time consuming, and if you try to take a photo of a photo, you end up with crooked edges and glare.

We knew there had to be a better way, so we’re introducing PhotoScan, a brand new, standalone app from Google Photos that easily scans just about any photo, free, from anywhere. Get it today for Android and iOS.

PhotoScan gets you great looking digital copies in seconds - it detects edges, straightens the image, rotates it to the correct orientation, and removes glare. Scanned photos can be saved in one tap to Google Photos to be organized, searchable, shared, and safely backed up at high quality—for free.

See how the PhotoScan technology works behind the scenes by watching this video from our friends Nat & Lo.

Pro edits, no pro needed

After all that time in the attic, your photos might need a few polishes. Or you might even want to edit that selfie from this morning. Getting the right look can take a lot of time and with so many editing tools it’s tough to know where to begin.

Today we’re rolling out three easy ways to get great looking photos in Google Photos: a new and improved auto enhance, unique new looks, and advanced editing tools. Open a photo and then tap the pencil icon to start editing. First, for auto enhance, just select Auto, and see instant enhancements a pro editor might make - like balancing exposure and saturation to bring out the details.

Second, our 12 new looks take style to the next level. These unique looks make edits based on the individual photo and its brightness, darkness, warmth, or saturation, before applying the style. All looks use machine intelligence to complement the content of your photo, and choosing one is just a matter of taste.