Nostalgia vs PaperScan

Nostalgia helps families scan, restore, organize, and share old photographs together with their stories. Its tools include repair, deglare, denoising, enhancement, optional colorization, background removal, and animation. Photo Insight checks an image and recommends a restoration step before one is applied. The archive can keep source photos and restored versions with people, captions, notes, dates, and places. Family-tree import can connect people in photos with relatives, and relatives can answer shared photo questions without accounts; the account holder reviews replies before adding them. Prints can be scanned by phone, while the Mac beta supports compatible flatbed scanners. Nostalgia is available on web, macOS, iOS, and Android. The free plan includes 10 restores per month and 30 welcome restores, with one restore used for each cloud repair pass. Family costs $7.99 a month and includes 60 restores monthly, 50 GB storage, and batch restoration for up to 100 photos. The maker says uploaded photos and restoration results are not used to train AI without separate explicit consent.

PaperScan is a Windows scanning application that acquires documents through TWAIN and WIA and includes OCR for searchable output. It accepts more than 100 input formats and supports PDF-OCR output in more than 60 languages. Image tools include deskewing, rotation, border and punch-hole removal, blank-page removal, color adjustment, filters and effects. Annotation options include highlights, freehand marks, shapes, lines, pens, rubber stamps, text, sticky notes and a ruler. It can save to SharePoint on-premises or online, send email through Outlook, read encrypted PDFs, create encrypted PDFs and support digital signatures. Output options include PDF/A, TIFF, JPEG, PNG, DOCX, XLSX and other listed formats. The Free Edition allows 10-page batch scanning or import. Home Edition costs $79, paid once for unlimited batch work; Professional single license costs $149 as a one-time purchase for one user on one computer. Home and Professional trials include all features for 30 days without a credit card, then require a license key to continue.