Import from Photos

Took a picture of a letter with the Camera app? From Photos turns photos from your Photos library into a proper scan: each photo becomes a page, cropped and cleaned up, with text you can search.

What it is

From Photos opens the iPhone’s photo picker. The photos you choose become the pages of one new document, in the order you picked them. Then they go through the same Review screen as a scan, where Paperwise:

finds the page edges and crops each photo,
cleans it up with your default look,
lets you crop, rotate, change the filter, reorder and delete pages before you save.

You can pick up to 30 photos at a time. The photos stay in your Photos library; Paperwise makes its own copy.

When to use it

Photos of documents you took before you had Paperwise.
Pages a friend sent you as pictures.
A screenshot of a ticket or a confirmation you want as a PDF.

If you want to keep a picture as a photo (not as a cleaned-up page), don’t use From Photos. Instead, in the Photos app tap Share → Save to Paperwise; it’s added as a photo on the Photos and videos shelf. See Save to Paperwise from any app. To move private photos out of Photos and into Hidden, see Move photos out of Photos.

Step by step

Tap + at the bottom of the Vault.
Under Import, tap From Photos.
Tap the photos you want, in the order the pages should appear. Tap Add (or Done).
The Review screen opens with one page per photo.
Check each page. Use Crop, Rotate, Filter, Retake, Reorder or Delete in the toolbar. Reorder moves the page you’re looking at earlier or later, or to the first or last place; touching and holding a thumbnail does the same.
Tap Save.

If you started inside a folder, the document is filed there. Otherwise it goes into your vault and shows in All items.

You’ll find From Photos in two more places:

In the Paperwise camera, the photo button at the bottom left adds photos to the scan you’re making.
On the Review screen, the + at the end of the thumbnails offers From Photos to add more pages.

Free and Pro

From Photos is free.

Pro: with Name and sort new scans on, AI names the new document and gives it a type, so it lands on the right shelf.

Privacy

You choose exactly which photos Paperwise gets, in the iPhone’s own photo picker.
Cropping, clean-up and text recognition run on your iPhone. Nothing is uploaded.
Your originals stay in Photos (and in iCloud Photos, if you use it). Delete them there if you no longer want them.
In your vault, the document is encrypted by Paperwise with its own key, kept on this iPhone only; Face ID guards the app when the app lock is on. Hidden adds keys only Face ID, your Hidden passcode or your recovery key open.

Tips

Pick photos in reading order; it saves reordering later.
Screenshots usually look best with the Original filter, since they’re already straight and clean.
For a photo that’s already cropped exactly, use Crop → Full page to keep the whole picture.

What if…

What if it says “One photo couldn’t be opened.”?

Paperwise couldn’t read that photo; the other photos are still added. If you use iCloud Photos, open the photo in the Photos app first so it’s fully downloaded, then add it with + on the Review screen.

What if a page is cropped wrong?

Tap Crop and drag the corners, or tap Full page to use the whole photo.

What if I want each photo as a separate document?

Import them one at a time, or import them together and then split the document. See Split and merge.

What if I want to import a video?

From Photos takes pictures only. Save a video with Share → Save to Paperwise from the Photos app, or use + → From Files.