Photographing a sticker sheet so every sticker is found
Detection finds stickers by their edges. Everything below is about making those edges the clearest thing in the photo — which is mostly about what you put the sheet on and where the light comes from, not the camera.
Four things that matter
- 1
A plain background
Put the sheet on something flat and single-coloured that contrasts with it — a white sheet on a dark table, a dark sheet on white paper. Detection is looking for the edge of each sticker; every other edge in the photo is a distraction.
- 2
Even light, no glare
Daylight from a window, or a room light that is not directly above the sheet. Turn the flash off: it puts a bright spot in the middle and a shadow around your phone. A glossy sheet shows glare as a white patch that splits a sticker.
- 3
Square on, not from an angle
Hold the phone directly above, parallel to the sheet. A photo from an angle turns circles into ovals and makes stickers at the far side smaller than the near ones — the cut-outs then come out at mixed sizes.
- 4
The whole sheet, filling the frame
Get close enough that the sheet fills most of the picture, but leave a margin so no sticker touches the photo's edge. A sticker cut off by the frame is a sticker cut off in the output.
What a good one looks like
What to avoid
- Patterned or wood-grain surfaces behind the sheet
- Flash, or a lamp directly above
- The sheet still in a plastic sleeve
- Shooting from an angle to avoid your own shadow — move the light instead
- Stickers touching the edge of the frame
If a sticker is still missed
Detection is a first pass, not the final word. Before anything is processed you see every box it found on the upscaled sheet, and you can drop the ones that aren’t stickers, resize any that are off, and add a box for one it missed. Only the boxes you keep are cut out, and only then is a credit spent.
Questions people ask
- Do I need a scanner?
- No. A scan is the easy case — flat, evenly lit, square — but a phone photo taken on a plain table in daylight is usually just as good. The sheet is upscaled before detection, so phone resolution is enough.
- Why were some stickers missed?
- Almost always one of three things: the background was busy so the sticker's edge was not a clear edge; two stickers touched or overlapped so they read as one; or a shadow or glare crossed a sticker and split it. You can add a missed sticker by hand in the editor, but a cleaner photo fixes it at the source.
- Does the sheet's own background matter?
- The sheet's backing — usually white or cream — is fine. What matters is what is behind and around the sheet. A patterned tablecloth or a wooden desk with grain adds edges that are not stickers.
- Can I photograph a sheet that is still in its packaging?
- Take it out. Plastic sleeves add glare and a second set of edges, and a glossy sleeve is the most common cause of a sticker being split in two.