Unfade
Dig out those retro photos
Free Developer doo, unfade.io Platform Universal Requirements iOS 9.0 or later
“Throwback Thursday” and “Flashback Friday” have us scrounging up potentially embarrassing photos to share on social networks, but getting old prints into digital form is more hassle than it’s worth.
Like the original, Unfade 2 makes it super-simple to capture (physical) photos using your iOS device. Lay pictures on a well-lit surface and the app automatically takes each shot and crops the edges for you. The app is now free, but only for the first 20 scans, and lacks most of the cool stuff from the previous paid edition. You can still get these goodies with a one-time in-app purchase of the Pro upgrade for $6.99, which is worth every cent; and the update is free for owners of the original, a classy move on the developer’s part. Pro adds automatic image enhancement, plus 25 other slick Instagram-style filters for different looks. There are still no image editing tools beyond rotate and crop, however.
Other features include the ability to add a title, place, and date to individual pictures or an entire album. iCloud support enables photos scanned on one device to sync everywhere else (including Mac and PC), although the app tends to be slow at doing so. Other cloud services would be nice, but sharing extension support works in a pinch, especially now that Facebook sharing is built-in.
the bottom line. Get quick, quality scans of photo prints, with no hardware other than your iOS device required.