Perfomaster 3000

The topic of straightening and cropping photos came up in this thread, and I thought I'd post this PSA.

BuxSoft publishes a program called PERFOMaster 3000 that automatically straightens, crops, and measures the perfs on scans of stamps. It works on existing photos, or it can import from your scanner. The only downside is that it doesn't do batch processing.

I shot a quick video demonstration to show just how easy it is.

And best of all, the full version of the program is free. The program is several years old, and the website hasn't been updated in years, so get it before it disappears!

Thank you, lets hope the key is emailed soon.

PostmasterGS,

thanks for this link. Program looks very good.

I received my registration key in under an hour, so apparently they're still operating despite the lack of updates.

Postmaster: that demo makes that program look pretty slick. I may check it out over the New Year holiday period. Thanks for posting.

Only problem I have is that the main documentation is in German. I'm sure you can guess what my problem is .....

If the expression "ein bier bitte" is in it we are off to the races. If not, we may have to have Fifa do a translation.

Wow, great program PMGS!

I downloaded it and got the key within minutes.

Don't worry about the instructions, they are not required, the program is so simple to use!

I tested it on some small queens, and the results came EXACTLY as my manual measurements here: https://goscf.com/t/17809#160151

BuxSoft

For some reason it won't accept my registration info. Once I restart the program, it reverts back to being unregistered. Oh well. I guess I'll tackle that problem when the one-year limit runs out.

Mine did not register the first time, but I think it was because when I cut and paste the key from the email, I included a space at the end.

The second time I deleted the space, restarted the program immediately as prompted and it worked.

I finally got it to work. In Win 7, you have to make sure you run the program as Administrator to get the registration to take.

Funny thing is, I've been using this for almost a year and never realized there was a 1-year limit. Guess I should read a little more carefully next time.

Thank you, PostmasterGS, for pointing out the existence of this program.

I am trying to work things out with it, but I am still perplexed by something. If the contrast of the scanned image is a factor that can influence the perforation measurement, how do you know which contrast to set. For example, scanning one of my stamps at 600 DPI (as they suggest) gives me different perforation measurements at different contrast levels (100, 105, etc, as per their scale).

Any ideas?

Vasia, I noticed a very slight difference when I moved the contrast slider bar from the center to the extreme left or right, but not enough to make a difference in the rounded final measurement.

I think they key is to scan the stamps on a black background.

If the default contrast is producing a perf measurement that's questionable, I'll run the measurement at about 5 different contrasts across the scale to see how much deviation there is and which is likely the most consistent result. In most cases, the deviation is hundredths of a millimeter, but enough to generate a final result that's 1/4 difference due to rounding.

I did quite a few stamps that I had with "known" perforations, and the results were excellent.

WOW!