Make a photo look scanned

First the page is found: the paper is brighter than the table, so everything around it is cut away. Then the light is evened out by comparing each spot with the paper around it, which removes the shadow of your phone and the darker corners. Finally every pixel becomes pure white or pure black. Grey paper turns white, and pencil, pen and printed text turn black.

That last step is what makes a photo look scanned. It also makes the file small, because a page that is only black and white compresses far better than a colour photo.

Typed letters, forms, handwritten notes, receipts, contracts and pages of a book all look best this way. Many offices also ask for it: the PAN card application, for example, wants supporting documents scanned in black and white. Black and white is wrong for documents where colour carries meaning, such as a blue signature that must look original, a coloured stamp, a photo ID or highlighted text. For those, use the colour scan.

Very light pencil can partly disappear. If that happens, write over it with a pen, or choose Grayscale in the options, which keeps soft greys.

Put the paper on a dark table or floor, so its edges stand out. Hold the phone parallel to the page: the tool does not straighten a page photographed at an angle, so a strong slant stays visible. Use daylight or a ceiling light, and avoid the flash, which leaves a bright spot. Each page goes into the PDF as wide as an A4 sheet, in the order you selected the photos.

If the PDF must be under a size limit, run it through Compress PDF afterwards. Black and white pages usually need very little squeezing.