tanghoong photobooth

Local capture

Turn a USB camera
into a book scanner.
Press space, get a page.

Point a camera at a page and hit the space bar. A numbered, timestamped JPEG lands in a folder you picked on your own machine — no upload, no account, nothing to install. Then keep going: one key per page, for as long as the book lasts.

Open the booth Free. Works offline. Your pages never leave the machine.
photobooth Hokkien Dictionary · next page #0142 141 pages Document Sharpen 0.6 Press Space to capture ALBUM Hokkien Dictionary (141) LOOK Colour Mono Document RECENT

How it works

Four steps, once, and then it is one key per page.

  1. Choose a folderThe browser asks once. Every page is written straight into it, where your other tools can already see them.
  2. Name an albumA dated subfolder with an index beside the pages. Switch albums any time and numbering picks up where that album left off.
  3. Frame the page and shootSpace for the shutter. Or clap, or say a word, and keep both hands on the book.
  4. Straighten anything that came out sidewaysR opens the album. Rotation is written back over the same file, so page order never moves.

What is in it

Built for getting through a stack of pages without stopping.

Every camera you own

Built-in, USB, handheld. Plug one in mid-session and it appears without a reload; C steps to the next.

Document rendering

Drop colour, lift contrast, sharpen the strokes. Paper goes white, ink goes black, and the letters carry the page.

Hands-free triggers

A clap, a tongue click, or a spoken keyword fires the shutter. One shot per interval, however noisy the room.

Review without leaving

Page through the album fitted to the window, zoom to real pixels to check the text, and rotate what needs it.

Files you can use

Plain numbered JPEGs in plain folders. Nothing proprietary, nothing to export, nothing holding your pages.

Works offline

Install it and the network stops mattering. The only thing it was ever needed for is the page itself.

More than a book scanner

The book is where it started, but nothing in it is about books. It is a camera pointed at a flat thing, a key that fires the shutter, and a folder that fills up in order. That shape turns out to fit a lot of jobs.

Books and long documents

Hundreds of pages in one sitting, numbered in the order you shot them, with the page order never depending on a filename you have to fix afterwards.

Receipts and paperwork

One album per month, Document mode on, and the pile is filed by the time you have finished sorting it. Nothing goes to a cloud inbox on the way.

Notes and whiteboards

Handwriting and marker survive the contrast lift better than they survive a phone camera's idea of a good photo.

Objects and materials

A fixed camera, a fixed light and one key means fifty swatches, parts or samples come out looking like each other — which is the whole job when they end up side by side.

Condition and progress records

A repair, a build, a delivery check. The sequence is the record, and the timestamps are already in the filenames.

Anything you would rather not upload

Contracts, ID pages, medical letters, a friend's manuscript. The reason to use this instead of a phone is that there is nowhere for it to go.

Where your pages go

Into your folder. That is the whole answer.

There is no server holding your images. The page runs in your browser and writes files directly to the folder you chose. Nothing is uploaded, there is no account, and no image ever reaches this site.

The one exception is stated where you turn it on: the optional voice keyword trigger uses the browser's own speech service, so your microphone — never your pages — goes to it while that is switched on.

What you need

Chrome or Edge

Writing straight into a folder needs the File System Access API, which Safari and Firefox do not have. There is also a small local server in the repository for anything else.

A camera

Any webcam works. The resolution is the real limit on how readable a page comes out — 1080p filling the frame with an A5 page is roughly 150 DPI.

Something to hold it still

Handheld works with a shutter delay. A stand is what makes a hundred pages come out looking like each other.

Open it and shoot a page.

Nothing to sign up for, nothing to download. It asks for a folder and a camera, and that is the setup.

Already used it? The booth remembers your folder and your last album.