For people scanning their own books
Capturing the pages is half the work. FixMyScan does the other half in one upload: one crop for the whole book, straight pages, white paper, two-page shots split, and searchable text.
Key takeaways
- Many people who scan their own books say the clean-up afterwards is the real chore. That is the part FixMyScan does.
- It takes the finished scan as a PDF or DjVu file, up to 1,000 pages. Combine phone photos into one PDF first.
- Two-page shots are split into single pages in reading order. Right-to-left books are not supported by the split yet; choose Don’t split for those.
- There is no dewarping, so flat pages give the best result. Press the book flat or use a glass plate if you can.
The capture is the easy part
Whether you use a phone app, a flatbed or a home-built cradle with two cameras, getting every page into the computer is the step everyone plans for. The surprise comes afterwards. The raw scan has dark edges, crooked pages, grey paper, two pages to a frame, a file of several hundred megabytes and no searchable text.
The usual fix is a chain of desktop tools: one to crop and straighten, one to split spreads, one to add OCR, one to shrink the file. Each has its own settings, and some are hard to run on a Mac. ScanTailor Advanced, for example, says OCR and assembling multi-page documents are out of its scope.
What you bring
FixMyScan starts from the finished capture as a single file:
- A PDF, from a scanner, a scanning app or a service
- A DjVu file, if your workflow produces one
- Up to 1,000 pages in that file
Photos as separate images are not accepted yet. Phone apps usually export a whole session as one PDF. vFlat, a popular book-scanning app for iOS and Android, says it flattens page curves, removes fingers from the shot and splits two-page spreads at capture; its App Store listing shows in-app subscriptions and paid text recognition packs.
What happens to the scan
- Upload the file in your browser. Nothing to install, on Mac, Windows, Linux or a Chromebook.
- Draw one crop. The pages are shown layered on top of each other, so you can see where the text sits on all of them. One box cuts the margins, the dark scanner bed and the fingers at the edge from every page.
- Download the book. You get one PDF back.
Inside that one step:
- Spreads become single pages. If at least half the pages are landscape two-page shots, each is split into left then right, at the fold line you check on the crop screen.
- Tilted pages are straightened, so the lines run level and the crop does not clip them.
- Paper turns white and text black. Pages with photos or drawings stay in greyscale so the pictures are kept.
- Every word becomes searchable, with the language detected for you from 19, including English, German, French, Latin, Italian, Spanish, Fraktur and Ancient Greek.
- Page order is kept. Nothing is dropped or merged.
Getting a better result from your scans
FixMyScan cannot rescue what the camera did not capture, so a few habits at scan time pay off:
- Keep pages flat. There is no dewarping. Curved lines near the spine stay curved. A sheet of glass on the open book, or a V-shaped cradle, helps.
- Light evenly. A deep shadow in the gutter is part of the page image, and cleaning can only do so much with it.
- Keep the book in the same place. One crop works for the whole book, so a book that wanders across the frame needs a looser box.
- Avoid right-to-left books with the split on. Books in Arabic, Hebrew or Japanese order come out in the wrong order when split. Choose Don’t split for those.
- Scan every page, blanks included. Your page numbers then match the print.
Size: from huge to sendable
Colour scans of a whole book are big, often too big for an e-reader. Send to Kindle takes PDFs up to 200 MB on its website and 50 MB by email. Black-and-white text pages compress far better than colour or grey ones. In our production run of a 300-page book on 2 November 2026, the file went from 13.0 MB to 9.0 MB with full OCR. Your book will differ.
Check your raw scan against device limits with the free will it fit checker. It runs in your browser and uploads nothing.
What FixMyScan is not
It is not a scanning app. It does not capture pages, so it works alongside whatever you scan with. It does not reflow the book into an EPUB, read handwriting, or let you fix single pages by hand. If you want per-page control, a desktop tool such as ScanTailor gives you that, at the cost of setup.
Rights
Copying a book you own is treated differently in different countries, and in some it is not allowed at all. Use FixMyScan on public-domain books and ones you have the right to copy. Your files are private and are deleted 24 hours after the book is ready, or 24 hours after upload if you never convert it.
Cost
Plans are $9.99 a week or $79.99 a year: unlimited books under fair use of 5,000 pages a week, one book processed at a time. If you scan in batches, a weekly plan covers a weekend of scanning.
For the capture side, see the guide to scanning a book to PDF. If a service did your scanning, read after a scanning service.
Questions
Can I upload phone photos or a folder of images?
Not yet. FixMyScan takes a PDF or DjVu file. Most scanning apps can export the whole book as one PDF; do that first.
My scanner app shot two pages at once. Will they be split?
Yes. When at least half of a book's pages are landscape spreads, the crop screen shows the fold line and offers Split, or Split and crop with a box for left pages and one for right. Each spread is then cut into a left and right page in order.
Can it flatten curved pages near the spine?
No. FixMyScan straightens tilted pages but does not dewarp curves. Capture the pages as flat as you can.
What resolution should I scan at?
We have not published tests on this, so we do not recommend a figure. Scan sharp enough that small type is crisp when you zoom in.
Should I scan in colour or greyscale?
Either works. Text pages are turned to black and white, and pages with pictures are kept in greyscale.
Will the finished file be smaller than my scan?
Usually, because black-and-white pages compress well. A 300-page book we processed on 2 Nov 2026 went from 13.0 MB to 9.0 MB.
Can I scan books I own and keep the files?
The law on copying books you own differs by country. Use FixMyScan on public-domain books or ones you have the right to copy.