Scanning Recipes

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1. Scan button Scanning a Recipe
2. Add photo Scanning a Recipe
3. Recipe fields Editing a Scanned Recipe
4. Save button Editing a Scanned Recipe

Paprika can turn photos of recipes into structured recipes in your collection. Choose a photo of a cookbook page, a magazine clipping, or a handwritten recipe card, and Paprika will read the text and sort it into the appropriate recipe fields for you.

Scanning needs Premium and a Paprika account, and its use is limited. If you're not logged in, Paprika asks you to sign up or log in, then carries on with your scan.

Scanning a Recipe Premium

From the recipes list, press the button to add a new recipe, then select Scan Recipe to choose one or more images from your Mac. (You can also go to File -> New Recipe -> From Photos in the menu bar.)

A recipe can span multiple photos — for example, a page of ingredients and a page of directions. Add all of the photos to a single scan and Paprika will combine them into one recipe.

Crop each photo so that only the recipe text is included. To crop or rotate a photo before scanning, open the … (More) menu and choose Edit. Use the rotate and crop buttons, then press Done. When you're ready, press Scan. Paprika will process the photos and present the recognized recipe for review.

Editing a Scanned Recipe

After scanning, the recognized text is sorted into the recipe's fields — name, ingredients, directions, and so on — and displayed alongside the original photo. Compare the result against the photo, correct anything the scan missed, and press to add the recipe to your collection.

Shortcut To copy text straight from the photo, choose Select Text from the … menu, then select the text and copy it into a recipe field. This is handy for fixing up any sections the scan placed incorrectly. Select Text needs macOS 26 or later.

To remove a photo from the scan, right-click its thumbnail and choose Delete. To start over, choose Reset from the … menu. This clears the recipe's text and details, but your photos stay.

Scanning a Recipe's Photo Premium

To scan a photo that's already in one of your recipes:

1. Open the recipe and click its photo to open the gallery.
2. Go to the photo you want, then click in the upper right and choose Scan Text. The scan starts right away.
3. If the recipe already has text, choose Add to Recipe to add the scan to it, or Replace Text to put the scan in its place, name included.
4. Check the result and click to save the recipe.

To leave the recipe as it was, click instead and choose Discard Changes. Scan Text is available once the photo has downloaded.

Scanning Tips

• For best scan quality, pick a high-resolution image with clear, readable text.
• Make sure the page is evenly lit and the text isn't distorted by the curve of the page.
• Crop out surrounding text (like other recipes on the same page) so only one recipe is scanned at a time.