Tips for Photographing Documents With Your Phone

TL;DR:

• Lighting is the single biggest factor: natural daylight or desk lamp
• Shoot from directly above, fill the frame, one document per photo
• Flatten the paper and use a contrasting background surface
• Quick check: can you read the text in the photo? If yes, it'll extract well

Lighting Is Everything

The single biggest factor in document photo quality is lighting. Natural daylight ; photograph documents near a window during daytime. If you're working at night or in a dim office, use overhead lighting or turn on your desk lamp. Avoid photographing with the light behind you, which casts your shadow across the document.

If lighting is unavoidably bad (restaurant receipts, for example), use your phone's flash. It's not perfect, but it's better than a dark, grainy photo.

Get the Angle Right

Photograph from directly above the document, looking straight down. This minimizes perspective distortion and gives the AI the clearest view. You don't need to be perfectly perpendicular; a slight angle is fine, but avoid shooting from steep side angles.

If your phone has a document scanning mode in the camera app, use it. Many phones (iPhone, Pixel, Samsung) can detect documents and automatically crop and correct perspective.

Other Quick Tips

Fill the frame. Get close enough that the document fills most of the photo. Excess background wastes resolution.

Keep it flat. For receipts, press them flat on a table. For curled thermal paper, gently uncurl it and hold the edges down.

One at a time. Photograph one document per image. Multiple receipts in a single photo reduces resolution for each one.

Contrast matters. Place documents on a contrasting surface. Dark text on white paper photographs best on a dark surface.

Check before moving on. Can you read the text in the photo? Is it in focus? Is the entire document in frame? Catching a bad photo immediately saves frustration during extraction later.