Once the border is assembled, mark it from high enough that the whole border is in view: then a selected piece's real spot inside it is shown on the camera view.
Lower is faster and much easier on the battery. Raise it only if small pieces are being missed — it does not affect photo quality.
Off by default: pieces are marked with a dot, which keeps the overlay smooth.
Leave at 66° for the iPhone's normal 1× camera. Don't zoom while scanning.
Measures your camera's angle in 6 seconds: tilt the phone back and forth over the table without sliding it. It helps the distance hint and tilt correction.
Each picture is read 10 ways (the app as is, glass mode at two levels, colour only, no shadow peel, no corner splitter, no tilt estimate, no photo fit, lower resolution, the old light window). Your catalogue is not changed. Send report includes the results and the pictures.
Saves the current camera view, the box picture, your last catalogued photo and diagnostic data. Choose "Save to Files" → OneDrive → Puzzle Helper → reports to get it to the PC.
Keep several puzzles on the go: each keeps its own pieces, box picture, answers and border. Opening one saves the current puzzle first, and New puzzle keeps the old one here too.
What the colours mean
Tips
- Use a plain cloth or board whose color is not in the puzzle (e.g. black felt for a bright puzzle).
- Pale or white pieces: lay them on a dark cloth or towel. On a white board their outlines get cut short (in testing, 9% of pale pieces read right on white vs all of them on dark). With a glass table, a tablet or laptop showing a plain white screen underneath works too: the pieces show up as sharp silhouettes.
- Glare (shiny pieces, a glass table): light from the side instead of overhead, or tilt the phone a little — the tilt is corrected. A sheet of polarizing film over the lamp plus one over the camera removes most reflections.
- Pieces face up, not touching.
- Light: a lamp off to one side, low over the table, makes every piece cast a thin shadow, which helps separate pieces from a cloth of similar color. Avoid a strong light directly overhead that bleaches the print.
- Hold the phone flat, 30–40 cm above the table, and sweep slowly. Then bring it closer (two pieces across the screen) and go over every piece once: an amber ring with a + means "scan closer here" — it disappears when the piece is checked.
- Border (toolbar) lights up the whole frame of the puzzle at once — corners orange, edge pieces teal. Tap it again to turn it off.
- Catalog from a photo (below) takes a full-resolution photo and catalogs every piece in it at once.
- Tap a piece to see where it goes on the box and which pieces fit it. Gold = best match.
- Drag across the box picture to light up every piece from that area. Tap it to enlarge it; on the enlarged picture, tap one spot to see the loose pieces that best fill it — ranked by the picture and by how well they fit the pieces already around that spot (gold on the table).
- In Find, tap Corners or Edges to light up every border piece on the table — orange for corners, teal for edges. Arrows point to the ones just off screen.
- Matches searches the whole catalog for pairs that fit, with no box picture needed; use ‹ › to step through them.
- Check the matches: try each suggested pair and tap Fits or No (in Matches or in a piece's panel). The app keeps score — More shows how often it was right — and Send report shares the answers so the matching can be tuned. A quick way: separate pieces you have already fitted together, scan them, then judge the suggestions.
- A piece is shown and counted only once it is checked: read up close twice with the same shape, seen steadily a few times, on its own spot. Until then it is an amber ring. A piece that is picked up and moved keeps its number and is found again where you put it.
- Box picture (in Find) hides or shows the small box picture when it's in the way.
- The white arrow on a selected piece points to its top edge as it sits in the puzzle; the panel also shows it upright.
- Zones (in Find) splits the box picture into six areas, A–F, each in its own colour, and rings every piece on the table in the colour of its area: sort them into six trays. The small box picture shows which area is which.
- Mark as in the puzzle (in a piece's panel) once it's placed: its spot on the box is no longer offered for other pieces, and Border and the finders skip it. Tap again to undo.
- Matches are labelled Strong (very likely, and backed by a second check — the two pieces pick each other, or a 2×2 block closes), Likely, Maybe or Look-alike (another piece is about as good). The percentages learn from your Fits / No answers.
- Map turns the camera off and shows the scanned pieces from above, as their own pictures, so several people can work from one screen. Drag to move, pinch to zoom, twist (or ↻ 90°) to turn it toward you, tap a piece for its matches. The finders and Matches work here too. Pieces moved since scanning: switch to Scan and sweep that area again.