Lay the table once.
Tap once.
You do not own a flatbed scanner and you are not putting your grandmother's photographs in the post. Lay the stack out, hold the phone steady over it, and get them back one by one.
The phone stays where it is. A spread this size is swept in six passes so each print gets more of the frame, then every one is cropped to its own edges and saved as a separate photo.
- Each print cropped to the edge of its own paper
- Empty places in your layout skipped, not saved as blanks
- Small prints enlarged so they hold up full screen
- The backs too, if you photograph them: handwriting counts
How many photographs can you scan at once?
Up to 56 in one go. You pick the layout before you shoot: three across by four down at the smallest, seven across by eight down at the largest.
Up to twenty prints, that is a single capture. Above twenty, Phossil sweeps the spread in several passes instead, four for a table of thirty and nine for a table of fifty-six, so no print is left as a thumbnail in the corner of one wide frame. It is still one tap and the phone stays where it is; you will see it count the passes off.
Smaller layouts are still worth choosing. Every print shares the camera between them, so a table of twelve comes back with more detail in each one than a table of fifty-six. If the prints are small or precious, use a smaller grid and shoot twice.
What happens to each photograph after the shutter?
Phossil looks at each position in your layout and decides whether a print is sitting there, so a gap in the spread is skipped rather than saved as a blank frame. What it finds, it trims to the edge of the paper, sharpens, and enlarges if the print was a small one.
From there each photograph goes the same way as any other: a date estimated from the picture itself, a place, a caption, and whatever names your family puts to the faces. How the dating works.
What will SuperScan not do?
It needs a dark surface. Phossil finds the edge of a print by looking for the gap around it, so a dark tabletop or a sheet of black card works and a pale kitchen table does not. On white, it cannot tell where one photograph ends and the next begins.
That reading cuts both ways, and it is worth knowing. A very dark print can be taken for an empty space and passed over. The screen tells you how many it found, so check that number against what you laid out. Anything missing will scan on its own.
It reads the table as a grid. Prints in a pile, overlapping, or turned at an angle come back cropped wrong. Rows and columns, with a little space between them.
And it does not mend anything. A torn corner comes back torn and a crease comes back creased. Scanning captures the photograph as it is today. The Colorizer and the Enhancer are separate work, done one photograph at a time, once it is in your collection.
Do I keep what I paid for?
You buy a collection once. It is not a subscription, and nothing you have paid for is taken back from you later.
Downloading your photographs is never gated and never charged. The scans are yours in full resolution, whatever the state of your account. See pricing.
Back to what Phossil does. For the flatbed side of the question, including DPI and handling the prints safely, read the guide to scanning family photos.