Gadgetory

somewhere in the back of your closet all but there is a box of old printed photos collecting dust I'm also guessing you do most of your reminiscing on sites like Facebook and Flickr after all that's where everyone seems to be uploading their photos these days if you have a stack of photos you want to digitize and don't have a scanner an appropriately named app called shoebox lets you scan old photos with your iPhone or Android once you have the app downloaded you'll want to set up your assembly line so here are a few tips first the phone you're using should have a good camera like the one on my iPhone 4s then grab a microfiber cloth and clean the lens you'll want to make sure you're getting super crisp scans and finally choose a spot with plenty of light otherwise you'll get grainy photos as a result of your camera trying to compensate for the shadows now you're ready to scan your photos launch shoebox and hit scan position the phone parallel to the photo set your focus hold still and then capture the app will automatically try to find the corners of the photo for cropping but if it's off you can readjust it by dragging just like this at this point compare what's on the screen with the original photo if the coloring is off you can adjust it with this option here and if you need to adjust the brightness you can do that too finally hit next and you'll see that the app will ask you to create a shoebox these are like albums that you can use to organize your photos you don't have to create one but it does make it easier to find your photos later hit next and add some info if you want and the photo will get saved to your phone and it will get uploaded to the shoebox site where you can view all of your scans the link to your shoebox account is shown here at the bottom now you can share your photos on Facebook email them to a relative or just sleep well knowing that if you ever lose your printed photos there's a digital copy waiting for you online if you have any questions hit me up on Twitter and subscribe to my facebook profile for more tips like this for CNET I'm Sharon Vaknin