A system creates an electronic file corresponding to a printed artifact by launching a video capture module that causes an imaging sensor of a mobile electronic device to capture a video of a scene that includes the printed artifact. The system analyzes image frames in the video in real time as the video is captured to identify a suitable instance. The suitable instance is a frame or sequence of frames that contains at least a portion of the printed artifact and that also satisfies one or more image quality criteria or other criteria. Upon identification of each suitable instance, the system will automatically cause a photo capture module of the device to capture a still image of the printed artifact. The still image has a resolution that is higher than that of the image frames in the video. The system will save the captured still images to a computer-readable file.