Turn pictures of your notes into a study guide
Upload a photo of your notes and QuerySpark writes study guides from what is actually in it, so you can see the whole topic on one page on exactly what your course covers. PNG, JPG, WEBP, TIFF and more.
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Drop a PDF, slides or notes
or paste a YouTube link
Quick answer
How do you turn a photo of your notes into study guides?
Upload photos of your notes, a whiteboard or a textbook page. QuerySpark reads the text with OCR, including neat handwriting, and organises it into a study guide: the main topics in order, key terms, common misconceptions and practice questions after each section. Choose a quick review sheet, a comprehensive guide or an exam-prep guide. It takes about a minute. New accounts get a 3-day Pro trial with no credit card; the free plan then includes 1 study guide a month and 5 MB files.
- Reorganises scattered notes by topic
- Quick review, comprehensive or exam prep
- Key terms and common misconceptions included
- Reads print and neat handwriting
How it works
How to turn a photo of your notes into study guides
- 01
Collect the pages for one topic
A guide is clearer when it covers one unit. Photograph the pages for that topic only, rather than everything in the notebook.
- 02
Upload and pick a guide format
Quick review if you just need the key points on one sheet, comprehensive if your notes are long, exam prep if the test is close.
- 03
Look for thin sections
The guide can only work from what is on the page. A topic that comes out with one line in the guide is a topic your notes barely covered.
- 04
Test yourself section by section
Answer the practice questions at the end of each section before moving on.
Example
Study guide from Handwritten notes
A sample of what you get from a photo of your notes on chemistry. Yours is written from your own file.
Handwritten notes: Acids, bases and pH
Definitions
- Arrhenius
- Brønsted–Lowry
Calculations
- pH = -log[H+]
- pH + pOH = 14
Buffers
- Weak acid plus conjugate base
- Henderson–Hasselbalch
Check yourself
Why does diluting a strong acid tenfold raise its pH by one unit?
What your study guides include
- A structured outline of the main topics in your material
- Key terms, learning objectives and common misconceptions
- Worked examples where your material has them
- Practice questions at the end of each section
How you study them
Read the guide to get the shape of the topic, then jump into practice from any section. The guide and the questions come from the same analysis, so they cover the same ground.
Best for: starting a new unit, condensing a long reading, the night before an exam.
How we read photos of handwritten notes
Photos go through Google Document AI OCR, which reads print and most neat handwriting. Snap a page of your notebook or a textbook page and study it a minute later.
Get the best results
- One page per photo, filling the frame.
- Include diagrams' labels; they make good questions.
Photo to study guide: organising messy notes
Class notes are written in the order the lesson happened, with asides, half-finished examples and the same idea mentioned in three places. A study guide pulls that together by topic, so everything about one idea sits in one place with its key terms beside it.
That also makes gaps obvious. If the guide's section on a topic is short or missing an obvious subtopic, that is where your notes, and probably your understanding, fall short. Fill it from the textbook or the slides before the exam rather than after.
Photos of a whiteboard or a lecture slide
A photo of the board at the end of class is a quick way to capture what the teacher wrote, and clear board writing reads well. Watch for glare from the lights, which washes out words, and for half-erased work, which comes through as fragments.
Board photos are often lists and keywords rather than full sentences, so the guide from them will be shorter than one from written notes. They work best combined with your own notes from the same lesson, made into a separate guide.
Picture to text vs picture to study guide
A photo-to-text app gives you the words on the page, typed out, in the same order and with the same gaps. That is useful if you want an editable copy of your notes.
A study guide is a step further: the text is reorganised, the key terms are pulled out, likely misconceptions are flagged and questions are added. If your goal is revising for a test rather than archiving your notes, the guide is the more useful output.
Turning a week of handwritten pages into one guide
For more than a page or two, scan the pages into one PDF with your phone's document scanner (the iPhone Notes app, or the Google Drive app on Android) and upload that single file. Scanned PDFs go through the same OCR, up to 120 pages per upload, and count toward your monthly PDF pages: 10 on the free plan, 500 on Student.
Things that trip people up with photos of handwritten notes
Shadows and steep angles cost accuracy. Shoot flat, in good light.
iPhone HEIC photos are not supported. Set the camera to Most Compatible, or screenshot the photo.
Very messy handwriting may lose words; type up the key definitions if that happens.
Questions about photo to study guide
Yes. Upload the picture and the text in it is read with OCR, then organised into a study guide with an outline, key terms and practice questions. It works from the text only, not from drawings.
QuerySpark is free to start with the 3-day Pro trial with no credit card. After that the free plan includes 1 study guide a month, with images up to 5 MB each.
No, as long as the handwriting is neat. If parts are very messy, type just those parts, because very messy handwriting can lose words.
PNG, JPG, WEBP, BMP, TIFF and GIF. HEIC, the iPhone default, is not supported; switch the camera to Most Compatible or screenshot the photo.
The labels and any text in a diagram are read and can appear in the guide. The drawing itself is not reproduced or interpreted.
Short, because one page holds only so much. A single page of notes typically makes a quick review sheet; several pages scanned into a PDF are better for a comprehensive guide.
Yes, most neat handwriting. Print is read near perfectly; rushed handwriting may lose the odd word.
Yes. Upload each page and generate a set from them together.
Choose a quick review sheet, a comprehensive guide or an exam-prep guide. Length follows your material: a ten-page chapter gets a page or two, not padding.
Yes, to start. New accounts get a 3-day Pro trial with no credit card. After the trial the free plan includes 1 study session, 20 questions and 10 PDF pages a month, and you keep everything you made. You can also try the question generator on pasted text without an account, 3 times a day.
Still stuck? Email us.
Make study guides from your photos of handwritten notes
Start with a 3-day Pro trial. No credit card, and you keep everything you make.
