You can scan multiple photos at once on any flatbed scanner: lay three or four prints on the glass with a little space between them, press scan, and one pass captures all of them. That part is easy. What takes the time is what happens next, because the scanner gives you one image with three or four photos in it, and you want each photo as its own straightened file. Here is how I place and scan the prints, what the Epson, Canon, HP and Brother software will do with a page of photos, and the free browser step that turns any scan, including ones you scanned years ago, into separate files.
How many photos fit on the glass
A letter or A4 size flatbed, which is what most photo scanners and all-in-one printers have, holds three 4 by 6 inch prints with a gap between them, or four wallet size prints, or one 8 by 10. The Epson V600 I use for most of these guides has an 8.5 by 11.7 inch glass, the same as an A4 sheet.
Leave about half an inch (10 to 20 mm) between prints and keep them a little in from the edges of the glass. Every splitting tool, including the scanner makers' own, finds photos by the gap around them, and two prints that touch come out as one photo. They do not need to be perfectly square to the edges. A bit of tilt is normal when you are laying out hundreds of prints, and the straightening step takes care of it later. Face down, lid closed gently so nothing slides, and you are ready.
Scanner settings that make the split step easy
Scan at 300 dpi if the photos are for sharing and screens, and at 600 dpi if you want to archive or reprint them. 600 is what I use in the Epson V600 walkthrough. Anything higher only pays off for very small prints.
Let each pass produce one image of the whole glass. If your scanner software offers to crop or separate the photos itself and you want to see how it does, fine, but if you plan to split afterwards, turn that off. It is also what makes a pass quick, since there is no preview scan and no dialog for each photo.
JPEG at the highest quality setting is fine for prints and keeps the files small. Pick TIFF if you want a lossless master. AutoCropper opens TIFFs, and large ones are fast now.
Save every pass to one folder under the scanner's default numbered names. The photos get their real names at the split step, not here.
What the scanner makers' software does with several photos
Each of the big scanner brands ships a utility that can find separate photos on the glass and save them as separate files. Each has its rules, and each stops at the scanner.
Epson. Epson Scan's photo mode with the thumbnail preview "automatically locates the multiple photos and previews them as thumbnail images", provided you "position each photo at least 20 mm apart from the others" (Epson's guide). When it cannot find them, Epson's advice is to switch to the normal preview and draw each area by hand. Epson ScanSmart does the same job in batch. When I timed it on my V600, three prints took a minute and a half to scan and separate, and one of the three lost half its sky to the automatic crop.
Canon. IJ Scan Utility "can scan two or more photos (small items) placed on the platen at one time and save each image individually" once Original Size is set to Auto scan (Canon's manual). Canon lists what trips it up: photos with whitish backgrounds, items on white paper, and very thin or thick originals. Its fix is to adjust the cropping frames in ScanGear and scan again.
HP. The HP Smart app's Multi-Item preset scans two or three items placed on the glass and saves them as separate files (HP's support article on advanced scanning). Three items per pass is the limit.
Brother. Brother's Auto Crop handles "a maximum of 16 documents, depending on the size of the documents", placed "at least 10 mm away from each other", rectangular or square only, and not tilted more than 10 degrees at 600 dpi (Brother's manual). It can save them as separate files or as one multi-page file.
Mac. Apple's Image Capture has a Detect Separate Items option under Auto Selection that works with any scanner the Mac supports. In our V600 test it split one print into two files and needed a preview pass first.
All of them work the same way: they detect at scan time, on their own scanner, with the lid down. None of them can help with scans you already have, which is where most people end up sooner or later, with a folder of whole-bed scans from a scanning weekend, a DVD from a scanning service, a multi-page PDF from an office copier, or a photo of four prints taken with a phone. And when the detection misses a photo, the fix is a manual selection in a scanner dialog, one photo at a time.
Get each photo as its own file from any scan
Upload the scans to AutoCropper, which splits and crops scanned photos automatically. It takes JPEG, PNG, TIFF, HEIC and multi-page PDF files. It finds every photo on every scan, crops each one to its edges and measures its tilt so it comes out straight. You check the whole batch on one screen: drag a corner if a box needs a nudge, add or delete a crop, or rotate a photo that went on the glass upside down. Then export. Every photo saves as its own file at the full resolution of the scan, named after the scan it came from (scan_1, scan_2 and so on), and you can write captions and dates into each file's metadata if you want them.
It is free for up to 5 images a day with every feature included and no account needed, and Pro plans remove the daily and batch limits. Detection runs on a small copy of each scan, under 750 pixels on its longest side. The full-resolution scan never leaves your browser.
Because the splitting happens after the scan, the scanning itself gets simpler: any scanner, any software, one file per pass, no preview. The checking happens once, for the whole batch, instead of in a dialog after every pass.
Scanning multiple photos with a phone
No scanner? Lay three or four prints on a plain dark surface in even light, photograph them in one shot from directly above, and upload the picture. AutoCropper treats a phone photo of several prints the same way as a scan, iPhone HEIC files included. The quality will not match a flatbed and glare is the enemy, but for a shoebox that only needs sharing it is the fastest way to start. Our scanning tips page compares the phone camera route with a flatbed and a scanning service.
A rhythm for a whole box
Scan in passes, split in batches. While one pass is scanning, lay out the next three prints. Keep going until the box is empty, and do not stop to fix anything. Then upload the whole folder and do the review in one sitting, where a missed photo is a drag of a box rather than a return trip to the scanner. The step by step for this rhythm on an Epson V600 with ScanSmart is in the fast photo scanning guide.
Can you scan multiple photos at once?
Yes. Any flatbed scanner captures whatever is on the glass in one pass, so three or four prints become one image. Whether they come out as separate files depends on the software: the scanner makers' utilities above split at scan time within their limits, and AutoCropper splits any scan afterwards.
How do I scan multiple photos into separate files?
There are two ways. At scan time, use your scanner's multi-photo mode (Epson's thumbnail preview, Canon's Auto scan, HP's Multi-Item preset, Brother's Auto Crop) and follow its spacing rule. Or scan the whole glass as one image and split afterwards: upload the scans to AutoCropper, check the detected photos, and export. That gives you one straightened file per photo from every scan, including scans you made years ago.
What is the best app for scanning multiple photos at once?
That depends on where you want the work to happen. At a flatbed, the scanner's own utility is free and already installed, and it does the job when the prints have clear edges and you keep to its spacing rules. If you have scans already, or the utility keeps missing photos, a splitter that works on the files afterwards is the better tool, and a browser-based one means nothing to install on whatever machine you are sitting at.
How many photos can I scan at once?
As many as fit on the glass with a gap between them: three 4 by 6 prints on a letter or A4 flatbed, four smaller prints, and more on a legal or A3 flatbed. Brother's Auto Crop tops out at 16 items per pass and HP Smart at three. AutoCropper has no limit on the photos in a scan, and its free tier counts scans, not the photos in them, at 5 a day.