This post also marks the very first entry in a new category I’m calling “Pick of the Week.” The idea is simple: every now and then, I want to highlight something I’ve discovered that I really enjoy and can wholeheartedly recommend to others.
So let’s dive right into the first pick. For about two years now, I’ve been working on a personal project: digitizing my old photo albums. Some of them were easy enough to scan on a standard household flatbed scanner. Small keepsakes like ticket stubs or postcards worked without any issues. It’s not complicated—just a matter of patience and persistence. Of course, the quality depends a lot on the scanner itself and on how much effort you’re willing to put into post-processing.
As a quick aside: it’s pretty fascinating to see just how much detail you can recover from photos that are over 30 years old. Many of them had developed the typical red tint or other discolorations over the decades. With tools like iPhoto, Aperture, or Photoshop, I was able to correct and restore them to a surprisingly good quality.
Following this method, I successfully digitized about six albums and stored them safely on my file server. But then I hit a roadblock: the remaining six albums were large ring binders, somewhere between DIN A4 and DIN A3 in size.Scanning those properly with a normal flatbed was simply impossible.
That’s when my internet research began. I quickly realized that “doing it myself” wasn’t worth it. It would have been too complicated, too costly (I would’ve needed to buy a new, larger scanner), and the results would likely be questionable. During my search, however, I came across a company offering professional digitization services: Digitalspezialist.com.They scan entire albums—either cutting them into individual pictures or scanning whole pages. I decided to give them a try and sent off two albums as a test run.
Their pricing model is simple: €0.39 per scanned page. Honestly, that’s a very reasonable rate. On their website, you can place an order based on the number of pages you want scanned and receive clear instructions on how the whole process works. I packed up the albums, shipped them out, and waited eagerly.
About ten days later, a package arrived back. Inside were my albums, carefully packed, along with a burned DVD. On it, I found the scanned pages neatly sorted in the same order as the albums. The quality was outstanding: the scans were complete, with no traces of the binder rings, and the resolution—around 2583 × 3868 pixels—was more than sufficient for both archiving and viewing.
The result left me extremely satisfied. The investment was worth every cent, and I now have these memories preserved in digital form, safe for the future.
So my very first Pick of the Week goes to Digitalspezialist.com. They’ll soon be receiving my remaining four albums, and in just another ten days, I’ll be fully digitized!
