How to Save Recipes From Photos

The solution to gathering all of your favorite recipes and notes into one handy recipe organizer might be a little quicker than you expected.

Digitizing your recipes from photos—whether they're in cookbooks, cards, or magazine clippings—makes it so much easier to have every recipe you ever need available on your phone or laptop. Best of all, if your recipe app supports it, you get to use digital conveniences like scaling a recipe, highlighting steps, automatic timers, or converting units.

For this particular set of instructions, I'm using the recipe organizer, Some Fine Food, but feel free to follow along with any recipe app that offers similar tools. Some Fine Food also allows you to do all of this from a regular laptop or tablet, so choose whatever suits.

Accessing the Photo Import Feature: With the Some Fine Food app or website open, tap the main menu (top-left corner) and choose the Recipe menu. From the Recipe menu, pick Recipe from Photo to open the tool for importing a recipe from a photo.
Choosing an Image: Once in the import screen, simply pick browse and you'll be presented with a bunch of options that allow you to pick a recipe image. The options will vary slightly, depending on whether you're accessing this from a laptop, tablet or phone, but should be self-explanatory. On a smartphone, you can usually take a photo of the recipe in front of you. Otherwise use an existing photo you have saved.
Submitting an Image: When an image has been chosen, you should see a small preview of it (to help you confirm that you've picked the right image). If everything looks correct, choose submit and allow the app to scan your photo to understand words and figure out what a block of text might represent. Some Fine Food will present feedback as it figures out the image, so you will know it's working away.
Review and Edit the Extracted Text: Now the fun part. Once the image has been processed, you will automatically be brought to a preview of what text was found in the image and what section the app thinks the text might belong in. Usually it gets this right but, sometimes it's far from obvious, so this is an opportunity to cut, copy or paste text into the correct section, if needed.
Save the Digital Recipe: If all is looking good, go ahead and tap save to commit this new recipe into your own collection.

Tips for Importing Photos:

Good Lighting: Ensure the recipe photo is taken in bright, even light to minimize shadows.
Flat Images: If the text in a photo is warped, it may be more difficult for the text to be understood. Try and make sure the page is flat and aligned straight to camera (so it's not an an angle or the page curves are not showing in the photo)
Sharp Focus: Make sure the camera is focused correctly so the text is crisp.
One Recipe Per Image: Most recipe apps expect a full recipe in the photo. If you include more than recipe, or only a partial recipe, it may not work.
Don't Include Unnecessary Details: If the photo includes text that's not part of the recipe, it may confuse, so try (as best as you can) to only include the recipe.
Text Style: While you can certainly try handwritten text, if it's particularly neat and legible, the best results are from printed or typed text.
Ownership: Make sure you own any cookbooks you're importing recipes from. Think of them as digital versions of recipes that were already in your collection.