A NEW APP from Google can take your old photos and convert them into high quality digital images.

The PhotoScan app can scan a photo, detect its edges, remove glare and straighten the image.

It can then be shared and safely backed up, leaving you with a digital copy of your old photo.

Jingyu Cui, Software Engineer for Google Photos, says: “We don’t want to mail away our original [photo], buying a scanner is costly and time consuming, and if you try to take a photo of a photo, you end up with crooked edges and glare.”

In recent years, the ubiquity of the smart phone and social media has meant that the camera phone has all but replaced traditional cameras as the way people take pictures. In recent years, sales of cameras have been in “free fall”.

According to a recent Internet Trends report, around 1.8 billion images are uploaded on social media every single day. That’s a mammoth 657 billion photos shared every year.

The App is available to download for free on iOS and Android.

Read: Man posed for photos while tourists had belongings stolen by accomplices

Read: If you’re not using burst mode on your camera, you’re missing a trick

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