My Special Photos

My parents sold their house and I have boxes and albums of old family photos. «My Special Photos» says on their website they will scan 4 photos for free as a free trial. Well, I brought my 4 photos in to them today and it turns out there is a $ 25 «set up fee» for the FREE trial. Don’t waste your time with these guys.

I had good luck here. I brought in two boxes of slides, newspaper clippings, book pages, momentos, and assorted sized photos. I had done some sorting, but not a whole lot. They did a good job estimating a price, they met their commitment in time, and I feel that they made good assumptions on what I was and was not trying to scan (book pages & newspaper clippings are tricky). They met their commitment on timing, and the price was fair (not cheap, but reasonable for the work he did). The best thing was that he didn’t try to upsell me. In fact, he told me not to get carried away with quality, and not to pay up front for editing. He keeps the files for some amount of time after the job is done, and I could email him the file name of the photos I wanted additional editing and cleanup work done on. It was a good experience, and I’m about to head back a year later with my next batch now that I got those documents all organized and sorted out.

I had 1000 slides scanned for a birthday present. They were ready before the day promised and were excellent quality. I did the 3000 dpi scans which look great. Some are dark, but that’s expected if you don’t pay for post processing. Amazing that all that didn’t even fill up an entire DVD.

One of the best investments of time and money to date. 1400+ images from 50 years ago, all on slides, all scanned in about 3 weeks time. WELL WORTH the cost, which was quite reasonable. The staff are the nicest folks, too. You will feel good not just having access to treasured memories, but for supporting their business as well.

I had a great experience with My Special Photos. I asked them to scan in about 72 11×17 photo collages and split up each photo. It’s very tedious stuff and they got all the little details right including naming the files based on the numerical number in the the photos. It took a little longer than they estimated, but it was clear it was because they put extra work into it. The photos look good and everything was returned in perfect condition.

I love this place! In preparation for my parents’ 50^th anniversary party, I brought in a big box of slides and a bunch of loose photos. Of course, I was worried about dropping off our precious memories not knowing if I could trust them since I was a new customer. Wow! With absolute perfection, they scanned everything onto a DVD in just a few days and returned my slides and photos to me in perfect order. I also paid them to help me put together a great slide show with music for the party. They were honest, friendly, organized… but most importantly, they are reliable and highly competent. I highly, highly recommend these folks without reservation. I will definitely go here again in the need arises.

I have a great slide scanner. And I have 2000+ archived slides. What I don’t have is time. Enter My Special Photo. For an incredibly fair price, they will do high-​rez scans of your slides (your choice of rez), put them on a DVD, and put the slides back the way they found them.
They DO offer photo manipulation services (via PhotoShop), didn’t use them, so can’t comment on that — but as far as slide scanning goes, good (great) price, well done slides done in an organized manner, and more importantly, it’s no longer a project on my desk. Through these guys, it’s just done.

Responsive and friendly service? Yes.
Recommended? If you have Adobe Photoshop.
I had a box of almost 1000 slides from my design school days and I was tired of dragging the box for yet another move. After considering a few places in the Bay Area I went with My Special Photos because I wanted no-​frills, friendly service at a reasonable price — Digital Pickle’s overloaded website totally drove me away.
Ed was very friendly, and reasonable. I dropped the box at their office, got an email and a phone call after 2 – 3 weeks that it’s ready, and it arrived in Fedex the next day. The shipping was free and it cost me less than $ 500 to get it scanned at 3000 dpi.
One problem. Most of them were way too dark. I had some studio shots of my artwork and those were ok. But outdoor and travel photos… uniformly very dark. I am spending half day re-​leveling and correcting them in Photoshop. Thank god for Batch command.
I asked Ed about this and he said it was a «recommended setting to ensure we achieve a balance between images that are under-​exposed, properly exposed and over-​exposed.» I wonder if this is the industry standard but it would have been better if I was informed beforehand — because if I hadn’t owned Photoshop I wouldn’t have been able to use these jpg files.