Photomyne Scans All Your Old Photo Albums Into Slick Digital Creations

By Lisa Shmulyan, NoCamels June 22, 2016 3 minutes

Vintage Photo Album. Photo via Photomyne's Facebook Page

Most of us cherish our old family photo albums, however many of our priceless memories and Kodak moments are typically stuffed in the back of attics – barely accessible and almost forgotten.

Now, Israeli app Photomyne is helping people preserve their old photos by swiftly digitizing them and storing them in mobile archives and on the “cloud.”

Founded in 2014, Photomyne has so far raised $2.6 million and is approaching 1 million downloads (for the $4.99 paid version and the free one, combined).

Scanning a batch of photos at a time

Photomyne simplifies the process of digitizing old photos by allowing users to scan multiple photos in a single shot. This means that users can flip through pages of their family photo albums and digitize the photos much more swiftly than if they scanned them without using the app. The app also auto-crops and color-enhances the scanned photos.

The user can arrange the scanned photos into digital albums or by year. Photomyne’s cloud backup saves both cropped and original photos, along with the details the user assigned to them on the app – such as description, location, and tagged friends.

In addition, Photomyne has a “discover” feature, an Instagram-like feed of photos shared with the Photomyne community, through which members can view photos dating back to the 19^th century!

The app – currently available for iOS devices – also allows users to post the scanned photos on Facebook, with the original date, to fill the chronological gap between their birth date and when they joined Facebook.

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Unlimited album space

The free version of the app allows users to scan an unlimited amount of photos on one album. The paid version, which requires a one-time payment of $4.99, allows users to fully unleash a range of capabilities, including unlimited scanning and album space.

With both versions, there is a premium option for a $12 annual subscription, which unlocks unlimited storage and backup, and allows users to sync and share scanned photos with other devices.

Photomyne App. Photo via Photomyne’s Facebook Page

Some of the competing apps on the market include Unfade, for $4.99, and Heirloom, which is free; other apps offer variations on similar services for photo digitization. Of course, one can also manually snap photos of their old pictures using a smartphone one picture at a time.

Preserving memories from past decades for generations to come

According to Yair Segalovitz, co-founder and CFO of Photomyne, the idea for the app came after he had searched for a way to preserve his own photo albums. With young children at home, he wanted to find a way “to preserve our family’s history,” he tells NoCamels.

Preserving memories from past decades for future generations, Segalovitz believes that Photomyne could become “the largest digital archive of people’s histories. A unique place where people can share photos with others, but also discover treasures relating to their families.”