Google introduces PhotoScan app so you can share awkward childhood photos online

KEEN to prove how adorable you were as a toddler? Google will launch a photo-scanning app to make the printed evidence Instagram-ready.

Google's new PhotoScan app is designed to let users capture old, printed photographs with their smartphone, while reducing glare and distortion.

REMEMBER that time you cut your own fringe before the class photo?

Or when chocolate biscuits went missing and you were rudely accused of the crime because your face was coated in cocoa?

Google could help bring those memories back, and make them shareable, with a new app designed to turn your smartphone camera into a scanner.

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The internet giant’s PhotoScan app, released as a free download for Google Android smartphones and Apple iPhones today, can be used to photograph printed photos and remove any glare, reflection, or distortion.

Google's PhotoScan app is designed to bring printed photos into the digital age.

The app works by capturing an image of the printed photograph with a phone camera, and then asking you to line up four dots — one in each corner of the photo — to capture each part of it.

PhotoScan combines the images to create a complete scan of the photograph, allows users to adjust its corners in case it is out of alignment, and to rotate it to the correct orientation.

The resulting photos can be uploaded to the cloud using Google’s free Photos app, and tagged with its original date and subject information.

In our tests, the app tackled both distortion and reflection admirably in most situations, though users will have to tackle common printed photo problems, like creases and dust spots, in a separate app.

Google also revealed it would continue to develop its original Photos app, released mid-last year, adding 13 new filters that also analyse an image’s content, and new video montage templates.