Digital Album - Presenting Stamps On Digital Album Pages

Almost instantly, but can be contoled by watermarking your images, if everyone did watermark, you would have to own the stamp in order to have a clear, unwatermarked image.

I love this subject, and I love it when others show off there digital albums. While I have been developing digital albums for several years now at DCStamps, in actuality, I got the original idea from kcb's blog (kiitos Keijo). I also love it when others show their work so I really appreciate seeing the pages from Blaamand.

For those skeptic out there, yes it IS a lot of work scanning your stamps, but it is really the only way of effectively showing off your collection to many people around the world. Also, it allows you to display your collection exactly in the manner you want - highlighting the important aspects in a way that no preprinted pages can. What makes it even better, is that you can easily change your pages to include new items or changes in your collection.

Similar to this.

To continue the Finnish lesson, I'm humbled to say 'eipä kestä' (meaning 'you're welcome').

-k-

DCStamps - - you have absolutely nailed the essence of the concept! You understood this years before I did amyway...

Your site is really an inspiration and a perfect site for reference on so many interesting areas. As my main interest in general can be described as 'Victorian era', your site is really fascinating for me. The digital collections you are presenting are simply beautiful




Exactly to the point!!
Which inspired me to demonstrate this for anyone not seeing the full benefit.... I played around a little on the SOTN album page which I posted yesterday. The revised album page was done in a couple of minutes, removing several stamps and adding others, completed without any hinges or mounts... The new page also displays some of the other benefits by going digital - allowing to extract the postmarks to highlight 'the important aspects'.




Anyone - please share your stuff !

Michael A,
I have spent even more time on your site, your work is simply overwhelming. Really a perfect site for reference for any collector. Thanks for sharing

More specifically for the topic in this thread your site is simply a demonstration of what I am trying to achieve! You are revealing some brilliant ideas in there, elements that can easily be implemented in a digital collection and which would otherwise be more difficult on ordinary sheets. e.g minor details like showing the reverse of stamps with signatures which makes such a big difference.

Obviously your the expert, me being the novice. The site says you are using powerpoint. I am wondering - do you have any particular reason for that choice, e.g - have you tried other software?
I am only just getting started at this and have only used powerpoint myself. Before trying any other software myself, I was thinking you have already been there Any experience in this matter would be much appreciated
Jon

I think the notion of a digital album is a great idea. I've thought about doing something like that, although since I don't store my stamps in albums per se, preferring stockbooks or cards, depending on the area, I prefer to just use a general gallery approach to my online presentations.

Many of you have seen my main website: http://www.revenue-collector.com

I also have a few other fledgling websites devoted to other philatelic topics:

http://www.j68covers.com

http://www.sockedonthenose.com

Each one is slightly different in terms of presentation.

Though I'm not Michael, I think I can provide some views as well...

If you want to decide 'classical looking pages', then either AlbumEasy or PMGS Stamp Album Page Generator for Scribus will do the job for you. There are some commercial options (with pre-populated) stamp sizes as well.

On the other if you like to play with designs and graphics, then PowerPoint or any desktop publishing tool is recommended. PowerPoint is pretty safe bet and easy to start with, and it will provide you with stunning results in no time. There are some limitations though (for example the output is always limited to ~300dpi / max size of 3072px)... If you want 'more', then a proper DTP (like Microsoft Publisher, Scribus, or Adobe InDesign) is required. They do have a bit of a learning curve, and reading the manual / watching some videos is heavily recommended.

-k-

Blaamand said:



There are 3 reasons I use Powerpoint 1) I know PP very well, having spent all of my career in the corporate environment, PowerPoint is an essential communication tool. 2) Powerpoint is very flexible, I can draw things, paste things and place them anywhere I like. No coding is necessary. I really like the WYSIWYG (What You See Is What You Get) environment. 3) Powerpoint uses a 1:1 ratio so when I paste a stamp, it is the same size as the actual stamp.

One very important note, for DCStamps, you are viewing my albums in .pdf format. I only use PowerPoint to build the album. To finalize the page, I convert it to a .pdf file for display. There are many good reasons for doing this, but the most important is that PowerPoint is not a very good format for the web. It is easy to make the conversion, you simply just "save as" the PowerPoint file to pdf.

I have put together a very detailed set of instructions on another stamp forum of how to make digital albums. I am not sure whether it is OK for me to reference that here, but anyone who is interested, drop me an email and I will provide you the link.

Keijo, regarding the 300dpi max, that is easily gotten around. When I scan images larger than 300dpi, I paste an enlarged view of the image on the PP page to show exactly what I want.

For anyone making these albums - the BEST piece of advice is to use what you are comfortable using.

Interesting concept ,I can see it being used by a person writing a article or a researcher using it for education . But I fought against people who claim ownership of material when in fact they just stole a picture from a stamp auction off the internet.
So I have a hard time accepting these digital albums after spending a life time building my collection . Many times I have shown some pages and the stamps would catalog a few dollars and someone who never shows their stuff on a regular basis throws up a scan of a $5,000 or $10,000 stamp ,then say it is from their collection . That kind of diminishs my page . So no I have a negative respond to digital albums .

I guess I am missing something. As a example, I used two pieces of software to develop this digital album in under 20 minutes. First, I scanned the first 34 pages of my National album with VueScan Professional (15 minutes). I configured it to rename the pages in order and save them to a new directory on my desktop. Then I used WOW-slider and added the scanned images. I configured WOW-slider to compile it as a 'book' (5 minutes) and presto, done.
Don

http://dd-designs.co/digitalalbum/index.html

Wow, the thread is alive, I like that

keijo - thank you for providing your insight as always, especially valuable with your relevant professional backround!

DCStamp - Perfect! that's absolutely some heavy arguments for me to stick with powerpoint, first of all because I am no data-geek at all. I would love to have this detailed set of instructions!

Floortrader - I understand your concern, no doubt it would be easy for anyone to 'fake' a digital collection if that would give them any pleasure. If anyone would happen to look at any off my digital stuff and think it's not right, so be it, I would still keep my own pleasure in doing it.

Don - your album is beautiful, love the flip-over presentation of your stuff. However I think your missing the concept, as your 'digital album' presents images of your actual hard-copy album pages (as far as I understand anyway?) The topic of this thread was more like creating digital album pages from scratch, only presenting the images of the actual stamps themselves. That would enable editing of your digital album any way you like, while your stamps would simply stay put wherever it is stored. Like in your admirable album...

Thank you all for valuable inputs to the discussion!

Before I conclude to stick with powerpoint.... As I am quite lazy by nature, I have considered using the Steiner pages as a starting point, and then develop them further for my digital collection. That would save me an immense job in creating frames, adding data etc...Does anybody know if it is possible to insert images, textboxes, frames etc on the editable Steiner pages?

floortrader said:



I honestly don't worry so much about what others might do. Stamp collecting is not a competitive sport and there will always be frauds and tricksters for anything one does (look at all the forgers over the years). If one wants to have a "faux" collection, so be it. Kind of ruins the fun and I really don't see the point.


51studebaker said:



Very nice tool and collection. Works really well if you have your stamps in an album. For those of us making digital albums, I think we like designing them around our specific collection and being able to put what information we actually want on it. As for me, I collect Dead Countries, no one has designed album pages with such a specialty, so I resorted to designing my own. Here is an example of a couple of my pages that I made to fit my specific collection:

DCStamps I agree with you about caring less what others do. So what if someone wants to build a virtual collection of items they'd like to own?

Your pages are lovely and show that you've put a lot of thought in the contents. Thank you for showing them.