Google PhotoScan preserves your printed photos in digital form – CNET in Spanish

The new app PhotoScan Google creates a digital copy of a printed image.

Photo by SSPL via Getty Images

The origin of the new effort of Google in the category of photos was born 69 years ago.

To Anil Sabharwal, the vice-president of Google Photos, the inspiration of PhotoScan, which quickly creates a digital copy of a printed image, back to his family history in 1947.

Her grandparents, who were hindus living in the muslim state of Pakistan, they found a few soldiers on the threshold of the door of his house. The soldiers were ordered to collect all the belongings they could carry on their journey to cross the border with India. Your grandparents left their jewels and other valuables, but they made sure to take their photos.

Sabharwal says that his father, who was 8 years old at that time, retains only a few items of his family dating back to before 1947. “You have a watch that your dad used to use, and 10 or 20 photos of your wedding and of him when he was a child,” said Sabharwal in an interview in New York.

Now, think of what the father of Sabharwal could have done with PhotoScan.

Google on Tuesday introduced this app, which uses the camera and the flash of the phone to quickly scan a printed photo. The app is supported on your software and machine learning to remove the reflection of the photo, cut it, color correct, and find the appropriate guidance before you to preserve it digitally in the cloud.

The photos have become more and more in a way that large technology companies like Google and Apple want to build a closer relationship with the user. Several of these companies offer digital storage for your digital photos, but the app PhotoScan Google takes this concept a step further by building a bridge with the world of the printed photos.

“The last time I was home, it was great,” he said. “I was picking up the photos so that I can share with my children.” He added that because of that the printed images degrade, digital copies will be perhaps the only artifacts that the children of their children can know their family history.

To use PhotoScan, you have to align the printed version of the photo that you want to keep in a box that is located on the screen of your phone. Add a touch to the phone to start scanning, and then move the phone so that it is positioned on the four points that are located close to the four corners of the photo. The points will turn blue and disappear when you capture every angle, and then the program takes a few seconds to produce a digital copy of these photos.

The app works with photos that are placed on a surface, or you can scan photos that are in a frame against the wall or in the pages of an album.

After you scan, PhotoScan upload photos to Google Photos, where the app the support automatically, in addition to applying on them the organizational tools built-in Photos, including the to identify the faces of the people in the picture, make it able to search with words like “marriage” without having that label, to include them in photo galleries and videos of automated, etc

The app it scans very quickly. Sabharwal says that one of the engineers of Google Photos was able to scan about 100 photos in 10 minutes while talking with his sister.

he Also said that Google worked hard to launch PhotoScan prior to the Day of thanksgiving (which this year falls on the 24th of November) and Christmas, when it is common for families to gather.

PhotoScan is available from today on Android and iOS around the world.

Google also announced other improvements to Google Photos:

• Now, editing in Google Photos has been boosted with tools such as improvements in automated or new filters-called “Looks” to play with the colors and brightness.
• Google Photos will now create videos or films automatic more sophisticated with your photos, such as the format called Lullaby (cradle Song) that will take the photos of your baby and be presented with a quiet music. Another, called Christmas (Christmas) combine images, and videos of your Christmas past. In addition, there are plans to launch more in the coming year, as a pet in April.
• The function of albums shared from the app now will make it easier to share photos with several people, sending a link to specific people to a folder of photos by email, text or via your own app Photos.