Postmark-Reveal.com, A Retro-Reveal Alternative

In light of the untimely demise of Retro-Reveal, I put together a new site that offers many of the same features. It's a work in progress, so please let me know if you encounter any odd behavior. They may be the occasional hiccup as I continue tweaking.

Feel free to give it a try. Hopefully it doesn't overwhelm my hosting.

Postmark-Reveal.com

It's free, though donations are always appreciated.

I did some tests and results are promising. For example, the very faded cancel on this Brazil stamp shows up nicely with filter 26 (CMYK ch 4), equally as well as it did with Retroreveal.





~Greg

I tested it out, one image was priceless for me!
Nice work PMGS.

Just to be sure, (23)SRGB CH.R, are there any "bugs"?

Not that I know of. Do you have an image that's giving unexpected results? If so, can you post it here or send it to me?

It's what I expected, but I could never clearly pull it using retro,
your program picked it up!
Just wanted to double check that there was no "bugs"

Well let's see it!

On the Malden cover I saw postmark reveal offered in another thread and decided to give it a try. I was suprised at how many images were available and think the program is quite remarkable.

PMGS,
I'll have to pass from posting it here, it's got no cert, so just speculation,
But the images off your program have given me more confidence in my guess, enough I feel It can labeled it and put it to rest.

Appreciate you going through the trouble of creating this!
Even if retro comes back, they have some competition far as I'm concerned.

Thinking out loud...

Very nice! I actually prefer the presentation over Retro Reveal.

Have you given any thought to storage retention? Retro-reveal retained images in perpetuity and the ability to view both publicly other people's images as well as your own private images... but IMO that is overkill for the needs of most stamp collectors.

The public-facing gallery, while nice, puts a huge storage burden on your hosting arrangement. I think that some sort of ability to revisit multiple images you have already uploaded yourself within a 24-48 hour time period, rather than being entirely session based, would be nice. I'm thinking of scenarios where one might be trying to compare/contrast multiple images. Right now you would have to start a new session every time you switch images.

Of course, if this then introduces the necessity of logins/passwords, privacy compliance issues, etc. then it's likely not worth it from an ownership perspective. Rather than adding accounts/logins/etc., perhaps simple browser cookie retention of multiple images uploaded from the same browser or IP address within a 24-48 hour time period would be sufficient?

Or are you deleting the images server-side much sooner than 24 hours based upon session end?

Note: None of what I'm saying should be considered criticism in any way. Far from it. What has been implemented is fantastic. I'm just thinking of a possible middle-ground feature set.

Again, well done!

As currently setup, it deletes images after 3 hours.

The bloat potential is enormous. With each image processed, you end up with 112 images -- full-size and thumbnail of 56 images (original + 55 processed images). This will only grow if/when I add new filters.

I debated implementing some form of short-form retention and recall, but the overhead to do that is a substantial increase in complexity, and I wanted to get the basic system up and running to see if any further investment of time on this little project was warranted.

A better short-term solution may be to just add a button that lets you quickly download the entire image set while on the results screen, though that might just convert the storage bloat into a bandwidth bloat.

"it deletes images after 3 hours."
No need to keep it any longer IMO, people can always reload a image.
Why overload the system with multiple images that have a single use?

3 hours seems more than reasonable. And being able to download selected images as currently available is good. Think it would be a rare use case that someone would want/need all the result images.

Agree with JustFella. After we use, we can copy the 2 or 3 images we want to keep, and go on with the next stamp.
Thanks for taking this on, PostmasterGS

Great! I just tried it out with a simple postmark, and it pulled it right out. Once I saved the image, I was easily able to "brighten" it up a bit more with my own software, so much thanks to all of your efforts. Well done!

Here is one I tried and got better results then I had with retro, again NO cert so just speculation, but I feel I can be done with it as well.

(Not trying to cross post, no need to comment)



Best I ever got with retro-


What I got with postmasters-


In the end, with postmasters program, I feel I can label this..



I think it gives a 99% chance of a correct ID(IMO), better then the 90% I was feeling with the retro images





Thanks PMGS,
great resource you have created!

PostmasterGS,
I tried postmark-reveal and it seems to work quite well. Thank you!

Your website has a somewhat different program, PMGS Reveal. What is the difference between these two programs?

I did notice a few anomalies with PMGS Reveal. Some images appear distorted but if you toggle between Prev and Next the image becomes normal. I am running OSX 12.3.1.