Board photos and handwriting to notes: a practical guide

How do you take a good photo of the board?

• Stand facing the board. In a photo taken from the side, the letters on the far side shrink and become hard to read.
• Avoid glare. If light reflects off a whiteboard, take a step to the side and turn off the flash.
• Move closer instead of zooming. Digital zoom degrades the image; photograph a large board section by section.
• Keep the order. Take the photos in the order your lecturer wrote; the note follows the same order.
• Shoot before it’s erased. When the board is full, take a photo before your lecturer starts wiping it.
• Check that it’s sharp. Zoom in after taking it; if it’s blurry, take it again right away.

Is your phone’s text recognition enough?

Live Text on iPhone and Google Lens let you select and copy the writing in a photo. To paste a formula or a single paragraph into your notes app, they’re enough.

Taking notes for a whole term is different: you need to know which course and which week dozens of photos belong to, put the text under headings and put diagrams back in place. Notju takes on that part: your photos are added to the course notebook as sources and, when AI is on, become an organized note.

From photo to lecture notes in Notju

1. Choose your course. Open the notebook of the course the photos belong to.
2. Upload the photos together. Select the photos from the same lecture together and put them in order before the note is created. Along with JPG, PNG and HEIC photos you can also upload PDFs.
3. Choose the note’s format. “Transfer as is” keeps the writing on the board as it is; “Organized note” arranges it with headings and lists.
4. Check the text that was read. When AI is on, Notju reads the text in the photo; you can review and correct it. Diagrams and charts are cropped and placed in the right part of the note, and formulas stay readable.
5. Keep your notebook going. The next lecture’s photos become a new section of the same notebook; your earlier notes and edits are kept. The original photos stay in your course’s Sources.

What to watch for in handwritten notes

You can also photograph your own notebook and turn it into digital notes. Handwriting is harder to read than print; these tips improve the result:

• Put the page on a flat surface and keep your shadow off it.
• Add more light for faint pages written in pencil.
• Check margin notes and arrows; they’re the parts most often put in the wrong place.
• Once the note is created, write out your abbreviations and own symbols in full.

Photos and recordings in one notebook

The board is only part of a lecture; much of what your lecturer says never gets written on it. If you record your lectures, also see the lecture recording to notes guide; your photos and recordings collect in the same course.