Like it or not, we're now living in a digital world, with physical media of all types being superseded by new formats. This inevitably leads to us all being left with a physical legacy, and transferring the content that makes up this legacy to digital formats is often a tiresome chore. One possible quick and easy solution to transforming photos from physical to digital is iPICS2GO, a new device from ION Audio that literally turns your iPhone into a scanner.
The box-shaped iPICS2GO is a digital photo booth that requires an iPhone 4 or iPhone 4S to work. Owners of either of these Apple devices are required to place their smartphone into the slot at the top of the scanner. The image that needs to be scanned is placed onto a photo tray and slid into place directly underneath the iPhone's camera. Seconds later, a digital version of the image is present on the iPhone ready to either be shared on the Internet or merely kept for posterity.
iPICS2GO works by using the iPhone's camera to take a snapshot of the scanned item. This does mean the quality and resolution is limited by the capabilities of the iPhone's camera, but with smartphones now being many people's primary point-and-shoot devices, this shouldn't be an issue.
You could instead point your iPhone at an old photograph and get a rough digital copy, but iPICS2GO will give a cleaner scan thanks to the inbuilt LED lighting and ability to keep everything lined up perfectly straight. You could also instead buy a dedicated scanner, but you'd struggle to find one at this price point.
This iPhone scanner works with photographs measuring 3x5 inches and 4x6 inches, as well as 35 mm slides and negatives. iPICS2GO is priced at US$63 and is available from various online and offline retailers. If you can do without the built-in lighting, along with the ability to work with slides and negatives, you might also be interested in the similar but considerably cheaper Scanbox or Steady Stand 200.
The video below shows the process of using iPICS2GO from beginning to end.