--- title: "How to remove glare and shadows from a scanned page" description: "Fix the shadow your own hand casts and the bright patch a lamp leaves on a glossy page, using the Glare Removal and No Shadow filters." canonical: "https://spirikle.com/blog/remove-glare-and-shadows-from-a-scan/" last-updated: "2026-08-25" --- # How to remove glare and shadows from a scanned page Two things ruin a phone scan: the shadow you cast over the page, and the bright patch a lamp leaves on glossy paper. Scan Clan has a filter for each — No Shadow and Glare Removal — and a few centimetres of movement prevents both. By Abhishek Chauhan · 25 August 2026 · 1 min read · [How-to guides](/blog/category/how-to-guides/) ## Step by step ### 1. Open the page in the editor Filters can be changed at any time, on any page, and any page can be reverted to the original photo. ### 2. Try No Shadow This is the one for an uneven wash of grey across part of the page — usually your own hand or head between the light and the paper. ### 3. Try Glare Removal This is the one for a bright blown-out patch on glossy or laminated paper. ### 4. Or Magic White for a mild case If the page is just a bit grey overall rather than patchy, Magic White whitens the paper and keeps the ink dark. ## Preventing it instead Light the page from the side, not from directly above. Overhead light on glossy paper reflects straight back into the lens, and a blown-out white patch has no detail left in it to recover — no filter can reconstruct what the sensor never recorded. Stand so your own shadow falls away from the page. Most shadows in phone scans are cast by the person holding the phone. For laminated cards and glossy photographs, tilt the page slightly rather than shooting it flat on. Edge detection straightens the perspective afterwards, so an angled shot costs you nothing and moves the reflection out of frame. Diffuse light beats bright light. An overcast window is better than a bare bulb. ## What each filter is for There are twelve: Original, Magic Color, Magic White, Black and White, Greyscale, Whiteboard, Blackboard, Lighten Text, No Shadow, Screen, Vivid and Glare Removal. Lighten Text helps a faded receipt or a worn carbon copy. Whiteboard and Blackboard are for photographing a board rather than paper. Screen is for a photo of a monitor. See also: [how to scan a document to PDF on Android](/blog/scan-documents-to-pdf-on-android/). **About the author: Abhishek Chauhan.** Founder of Spirikle and the maker of Scan Clan, a free document scanner app. ## Continue reading - [How to sign a PDF on your phone](https://spirikle.com/blog/sign-a-pdf-on-your-phone/) — You do not need to print, sign and re-scan. Open the PDF in Scan Clan, add your signature, and send it back. You can draw the signature on the screen, or photograph one you wrote on paper and Scan Clan will lift it off the page. - [How to scan a document to PDF on Android](https://spirikle.com/blog/scan-documents-to-pdf-on-android/) — Open Scan Clan, point the camera at the page, and let it find the edges. It straightens the photo, evens out the lighting, and gives you a PDF you can send. The whole thing takes about fifteen seconds per page. - [How to scan a document without a watermark](https://spirikle.com/blog/scan-a-document-without-a-watermark/) — Scan Clan does not stamp anything on your scans. There is no watermark to remove and no upgrade that takes it off, because there is no paid tier here for it to belong to. If you want a watermark — "COPY", "DRAFT", your own name — you can add one deliberately. > **Scan Clan** is our free document scanner app for Android: it turns paper into clean, straight PDFs with your camera, and can sign, compress and share them — no ads and no subscription. [Get it on Google Play](https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=com.spirikle.scanclan). For quick jobs on a computer, try the [free PDF and image tools](/tools/). --- _Scan Clan · https://spirikle.com/blog/remove-glare-and-shadows-from-a-scan/ · published by Spirikle · support@spirikle.com_