What is Capture Australia?

Capture Australia is a photo digitisation service that scans printed photos and albums using proprietary glare-removal technology. We work with a network of partner shops in Sydney, Canberra and Brisbane. Customers drop off their albums or loose prints at a local partner shop, and the shop handles the scanning before returning the originals safely.

Where do I get my photos scanned?

Capture Australia operates through partner shops in Sydney, Canberra and Brisbane. You bring your albums or loose prints to the nearest partner location, leave them for scanning, and collect them once the job is done. Visit captureaus.com/where-to-scan to find your closest shop and its opening hours.

What technology does Capture Australia use to remove glare?

Capture Australia uses a proprietary 8-layer glare-removal process. The scanner captures multiple exposures of each photo through the album plastic sleeve, then processes those layers to strip out glare and reflections. The output is a clear, detailed digital copy, produced without ever removing the photo from the album.

Do my photos need to come out of the album?

No. The scanning technology works through album plastic sleeves and pages, so your photos stay exactly where they are throughout the process. There is no risk of tearing, bending or damaging the originals at any point.

What sizes of photos does Capture Australia scan?

Capture Australia scans printed photos across a wide range of sizes. Small wallet prints, standard 4x6 inch and 5x7 inch photographs, 8x10 portraits and larger prints up to and including large format scanning of framed portraits and artworks, with a capture area of up to 45cm x 70cm. The proprietary scanning equipment is physically installed at each partner shop, built specifically to handle this full size range without removing photos from their sleeves, albums or frames. The same 8-layer glare-removal technology applies at every scale, so the digital output is sharp and consistent whether the print is a pocket-sized snap or a large framed portrait or artwork. Slides, negatives and film require different equipment and some partner shops like Photoland, Camera House and Retromedia offer these services. The wider Capture group covers those formats outside of Australia at capture.com and capture.hk.

How are my digitised photos delivered?

Once scanning is complete, your photos are delivered as high-resolution digital files on a USB drive or via a secure online downloadable link. Confirm the delivery method with your partner shop when you drop off your photos.

Is Capture Australia listed in Google Photos?

Yes. You can find Capture Australia in the Google Photos app import function. In the Google Photos app or website, tap the '+' button, select 'From other places', then choose 'Digitise physical photos' to find us. After we deliver your files via USB or downloadable link, you upload them to your Google Photos account yourself through the app on your own device.

Is the scan quality consistent across all partner shops?

Yes. Every partner shop uses the same Capture Australia proprietary scanning workflow and glare-removal technology, so the output quality is consistent regardless of which location handles the job. Each photo goes through the same multi-layer processing at every shop.

How much does photo scanning cost in Australia?

The cost depends on your situation: the partner shop you use, the size of your collection, whether you need express turnaround, and whether any additional manual steps are involved, such as archival full-page captures or handling unusually fragile prints. Our semi-automated scanning workflow keeps the baseline cost low, because the technology does the heavy lifting on each photo rather than requiring hour-by-hour manual labour. Different partner shops run their own promotions from time to time, and larger collections can qualify for better rates. The best way to get an accurate figure is to contact your nearest partner shop with a rough count of your photos and albums.

Organise 1,000 Scanned Photos in Google Photos Australia

How to Organise 1,000+ Scanned Photos in Google PhotosScanned your photos? Great! Now learn how to practically organise your large digitised photo collection in Google Photos. Stop archiving and start curating your

Getting your photos scanned is the easy part. What trips most people up is the moment they see 800, or 1,200, or 2,000 files in a folder and wonder what on earth to do with them.

The answer is to stop treating it like a filing task and start treating it like a curation task. You're not archiving a database. You're building a family library.

Let Google do the sorting first

Before you start manually moving anything, upload your scanned photos to Google Photos and give it 24 to 48 hours to analyse and index them. The uploading is relatively easy, following the instructions in the Google Photos app, normally with the "+" button and selecting a "folder upload" that will then just push all the photos into the cloud storage. It's secure, and still private to your Google email account (Gmail) and 15Gb of storage is at at around 10,000 standard digital photos (1mb to 2mb files).

Google's AI (artificial intelligence) reads the metadata embedded in each file and uses image recognition to identify faces, locations, and subjects. After processing, the People and Albums tabs start to auto-populate.

If your scanning service embedded the original photo date in the file metadata, Google will sort chronologically. If not, the photos will sort by scan date. You can manually correct dates later by editing individual photos, or you can accept chronological approximations and focus on albums instead.

Create albums by chapter, not by year

Year-based albums ("1987," "1994") are searchable but not enjoyable. Albums organised by chapter are both.

Think about the natural stories in your collection: a family home you grew up in, a period before and after someone migrated, a grandparent's working life, the years before children arrived. These make albums people actually open.

For large collections, start with four or five anchor albums covering the biggest chapters. Everything else can sit in the main library, which Google Photos surfaces automatically through Memories and its search function.

Use face recognition to find everyone

Once Google has processed your library, go to the People tab and label each person. You only need to do this once. After that, you can search for a name to see every photo that person appears in across the entire library, spanning decades.

For families with extended collections across multiple generations, this is genuinely useful. A grandparent you barely knew as a child becomes searchable across 40 years of photos you've never seen together in one place before.

Share a family album

Create a shared album and invite family members to view it. This works across iPhones, Android devices, and desktop browsers. Relatives in other states or countries can access the same library, comment on photos, and add their own where they have copies that fill in the gaps.

For families where the photos were held by different people before scanning, a shared album becomes the first time everyone sees the complete picture together.

Put them on a screen

Google Photos connects directly to Google Nest Hub displays, Chromecast-enabled TVs, and digital photo frames that support the Google Photos API (application programming interface). Set up a Memories screensaver and photos rotate through the day automatically.

This is the step most people don't get to, and it's the step that makes the whole effort worthwhile. Photos that sit in a folder on someone's laptop stay there. Photos on a screen in the kitchen become part of daily life. Digital photo frames with the Frameo operating system will also connect to Google Photos, turning your digital photo frame into a constantly updated album!

Why Capture's files work directly with Google Photos

Capture Australia is an official Google Photos partner. Scanned files are delivered as high-resolution JPEGs formatted for direct upload, and every Capture partner can assist you in having these files returned to you on an USB, or via a link to cloud downloads. There are no conversions required, no compatibility issues.

Google Photos can be installed on any device, and don't be alarmed that you may have photos elsewhere. You can easily merge your Capture scanned photos with camera photos, or other folders where you have previously stored valuable photos, giving you a great way to consolidate and collate those valuable memories, fun times, and key moments of your life.

Find a partner shop near you → HERE