Photographing a barcode so it decodes
- Shoot straight on, not at an angle, so the bars keep their proportions.
- Include the blank margins at both ends. Cropping too tight removes the quiet zone scanners need.
- Make sure the narrowest bars are sharp. Blurry photos of small barcodes are the most common failure.
- Rotated images are fine; the decoder tries different orientations.
Checking a barcode you generated
Download your barcode from the Barcode Generator as PNG and drop it here. If the decoded value matches what you entered, the barcode is structurally correct. It's still worth testing a printed copy with the scanner that will be used, because print size and quality matter too.
Formats
Reads Code 128, Code 39, Code 93, Codabar, ITF / ITF-14, EAN-13, EAN-8, UPC-A, UPC-E, GS1 DataBar, Data Matrix, PDF417, Aztec. MSI and Pharmacode can be generated on ScanHatch but can't be decoded here.