ScanHome βΊ Reduce shadows on a document
Reduce shadows on a scanned document
This tool reduces and cleans up shadows on a scanned document: the grey, uneven patch left when your hand or phone casts a shadow while you photograph a page. Free, up to 10 documents a day.
Last updated: September 2026
ScanReviver evens out that lighting: it lifts the background toward white and reduces shadows, so the page reads clearly, then exports a clean PDF or image. Free, deleted right after, no account.
Your file is deleted the moment it's done. The big PDF sites keep your bank statements and IDs on their servers. Here the original goes right after processing, the result after 45 minutes, or sooner, on your click.
The edges are found for you here. Want to drag the corners yourself, reorder pages or switch between colour and black & white? Open the full scanner.
Even out the lighting now
Upload a JPG, PNG, WebP, HEIC, TIFF, BMP, GIF or AVIF photo: nothing to install.
Open the tool βWhere people come from before they even upload
How ScanReviver handles shadows
It estimates the uneven background of the page and divides it out, which flattens gradual shading and lifts the paper toward a consistent near-white. In plain terms: soft, gradual shadows across the page are strongly reduced, and the text stays put. You can then choose Clean Document for a near-white scanned look, or Black & White for crisp text-only pages, and fine-tune brightness and background whiteness with the sliders.
Tips for the best result
- Shoot straight down with even, indirect light where you can: the more even the photo, the cleaner the result.
- Avoid casting your own shadow across the middle of the page.
- If a corner is very dark, raise the brightness slider a little after cleaning.
Where the shadow comes from is where you fix it
Almost every shadow on a photographed page comes from one of four sources, and each has a two-second fix:
- Your own head and shoulders. The classic: one light overhead, you leaning over the page, and a soft dark band across the top third. Step to the side so the light comes over your shoulder rather than past your head.
- The phone itself. Holding the phone between a ceiling lamp and the page casts a rectangular shadow right where the text is. Move the page, not the phone.
- A single hard point light. One bright spot overhead gives a strong gradient from the middle out. Turn on a second lamp on the other side, or move to a window.
- A window on one side. Gives you a clean bright-to-dark ramp across the page. This is the one the software handles best, because the gradient is smooth.
The single best setup, if you have it: page flat near a window, you standing with the window behind and slightly to one side, phone parallel to the paper. Even light, no head shadow, no glare.
Two shadows the software genuinely can't fix
The correction estimates the paper's brightness across the page and evens it out. That works on gradients. It cannot invent information that the camera didn't record, and there are two cases where the information is gone:
- A hard shadow crushed to black. If the dark band is so deep that the text and the paper inside it are the same near-black value, there is no difference left to amplify. Lifting it produces grey mush, not letters.
- Blown-out glare. The opposite failure: a reflection so bright that the paper reads as pure white and the ink with it. Once a pixel is at maximum, everything that was there is lost.
How to remove shadows from a scan comes down to the same upload box above, and if you're looking for an app to remove shadows from a phone photo of a page instead, this is that free tool, no account needed. Remove shadow from document photo online free and remove shadow from document image both run this exact lighting correction, straight from a JPG or PNG.
Remove shadow from document online never asks for an account, and remove shadow in document runs the same estimate-and-even-out pass described above. Remove shadow on document, or remove shadow from photo of document, runs the same lighting correction on this page. And despite sounding like it, ai remove shadow from document isn't quite accurate: there's no generative model involved, just an estimate of the page's own lighting, evened out. One shadow it isn't built for: a shadow across a face or a portrait rather than a document background. That's a different kind of retouching this page doesn't attempt.
There's also a deliberate safeguard worth knowing about. On a mostly dark image, a photo of a screen, a slide with a black background, the "estimate the paper" assumption doesn't hold, and forcing it would produce a colour cast rather than a clean page. The tool detects that case and skips the correction instead of guessing. If your result looks untouched, that's the message: the frame was too dark to treat as paper, and a re-shoot with more light will do more than any slider.
Crop to the page first
One habit improves shadow removal more than any setting: set the corners before you clean (in the full scanner; the box above finds them for you). The correction estimates the paper brightness across the whole frame, so a wooden desk, a dark tablecloth or your own hand in the shot all get counted as "page", and they drag the estimate in the wrong direction, which leaves the real page under-corrected.
Crop tight to the paper first, then run the cleanup. Same photo, better result, no sliders touched. And if a corner of the desk still sneaks in at the edge, pull the corner handles in the full scanner a millimetre inside the paper edge rather than a millimetre outside.
By Sam Ridder, I build and run ScanReviver on my own hardware, on my own. Who I am.
It is not AI in the generative sense: no model redraws anything, it is an estimate of the page's own lighting, evened out. One shadow it isn't built for: a shadow across a face or a portrait rather than a document background. That's a different kind of retouching this page doesn't attempt.
Frequently asked questions
Will it remove a shadow completely?
Not always. ScanReviver reduces shadows by evening out the lighting. Removing soft, gradual shading across the page works well; a very dark, hard-edged shadow may still leave a faint trace. It improves the page, but it doesn't guarantee a shadow-free result.
Does it change the text?
No generative AI is used, so text, numbers and signatures are never rewritten. It does adjust lighting and contrast, which changes pixels, so on a heavily processed page check faint details before relying on the result.
What are my privacy options?
Your original upload is deleted right after processing; the cleaned result is deleted automatically after 45 minutes, or immediately with "Delete now". Nothing is used for AI training, sold or shared.
How do I remove a shadow from a scanned document?
Upload the photo or the scan; the darker side is detected and evened out automatically, free and with no account. That is how to remove shadow from scanned document pages and phone photos alike: an image from a scanner goes through the same lighting correction, so the grey band a scanner lid or a book spine leaves is evened out too. You can remove shadow from scanned document images online without installing anything.
Can it remove a shadow that's only in one corner?
Yes. The correction isn't a flat brightness boost; it evens out whichever part is darker, corner shadows included.
How do I remove a shadow from a PDF, not just a photo?
This box takes images, not PDF files, so turn the PDF page into an image with PDF to JPG first, then upload it. The shadow is removed the same way, and you can export a PDF again.
Is there a quicker way than doing it by hand in Photoshop?
Yes. This works in your browser and our server does it automatically in one pass, with nothing to install and nothing to pay.
Why does my scan have a shadow in the first place?
Usually your hand, your phone or the angle of the light falling across the page. Shooting with the light from the side, phone directly above, avoids most of it.
Can I remove shadow from a picture that isn't a document?
The lighting fix is built for flat pages, so to remove shadow from picture files of other flat, evenly lit subjects it works the same way, but it isn't made for shadows on faces or 3D objects.
Limitations
This tool reduces shadows by balancing the page's lighting; it does not erase objects or reconstruct text that a hard shadow has hidden. Very dark shadows, glare, and text covered by a shadow's edge may remain imperfect. It's a cleanup, not magic.
A shadow on the ground or a wall in an ordinary photo, not on a page, is a different job: BGNinja's shadow remover paints it out and rebuilds what was underneath.
Once shadows are gone, clean scanned document handles any remaining noise or specks. Photographing a whiteboard instead of paper? Whiteboard photo to PDF is built for that specific glare.