Making My Own Album

Michael,

I would love to see your presentation, but won't be at the show. Any chance it will be video taped? If not, where can one get access to the PP presentation afterwards?

Thanks,
Chris

P.S., hope you include the use of PowerPoint to make pages in your presentation. That's what I used to make my pages (modifying Steiner pages, however, not from scratch)

Another alternative for designing your own stamp pages is Scribus. It's an open source desktop publishing program that's available for Windows. Mac and Linux.

I use it to design all my album pages.

http://www.scribus.net/

There's a learning curve, but in my opinion it's worth it. It gives you more flexibility than LibreOffice.

I will check that out. Thanks. Could you post a pic of one of your pages?

You can see them all on http://www.stamphacks.com

But here are some samples:

United States:



Ukraine:



Ireland:

If you have the original Steiner Pagemaker files, the files can be opened in Adobe InDesign CS1-CS6. After CS6, the ability to open Pagemaker files is dropped.

I still have my original CD from approximately 2001 with all the Pagemaker files and use InDesign CS6 on my Mac to modify the files and create custom pages using the same templates.

-- Paul

Thank you!

If you are going to create your own pages, I would suggest creating a style first (create all the frames for common size stamps). what is above/below stamp, and spacing in all directions. etc. If you consider each page a blank canvas you will spend a lot of time playing.

I had used AlbumPro in the past but it does not run on windows 7 and likely moving to windows 10. I also have Microsoft Publisher on my old PC but may start with Scibus and will use Steiner or Stamphacks pages as a starting point. I do not need all the added text. I am focusing on definitive series and create something similar to what Jim's web album pages. I tried contacting him to see if I could get one sample source file to start with.

http://album.dweeb.org/pages/1986_01.html

Jaxom 100 , Nice work you fill well the page and I like your watermark been included

but unless you are using black mounts, some of the image or text in the box will show.

Also if you use the tiles function I circle on the left menu your box will be even

The box really is even. The page makes it look off when I put text above it but the closer you zoom in, the boxes are really the same line. It is an optical illusion that does not come out in the pages. This program allows for alignment (see bottom left of photo). It gives a lot of options to customize each page and box sizes. I use black mounts, tight fit. I do not like the stamp being able to move in place. The mounts fill the boxes. Here is another example for creativity.

Those are nice pages.

Jaxom, you should not use Scott and get the Philatelia Hungarica Catalogue, actually Michel use it.

1- On your first row of stamps, you should have 12 x perf 15 and 5 x perf 14;14½ ( it's not even 14 )
2- The surcharged Air Mail are not 1926 but 1927
3- the One you list as 1928-32 type of 1926 are in fact from 1929

4- The last row are not not from 1928-32 but from 1931

Will not help a lot if I cannot read the language. lol.
I did have date on last set wrong according to Scott. It was the last page I had just finished. Did not proof check it. What is done in most Hungarian albums about the numerous imperf issues? I am making spots for the sets that Scott says they made.

My point is that Scott is wrong in about everything outside US, So if you want get specialized, you need to use specialized reference.

I do what I can with what I have. I work hard on the pages and they will look sharp when I am finished. I am only going to 1950 and then place the pages in my Scott International album. I say that now, but I may change my mind. I have a lot of mint stamps waiting for me to finish. I need to start selling the duplicates I have. I had purchased 6 lots of dealer stock cards. There is a lot of choice material with extras.

It does teach you a lot about a country's stamps by making pages for it.

In the end most non-English specialized stamp catalogues have the same "format" if you will so you don't need to be multi-lingual to figure out the basics.

So for example in the pages that area66 posted from the Hungarian catalog, one would guess that

# F. Fog. must refer to the perforation
T : is the abbreviation for designer
F : abbreviation for date of release

Ofszetny/Melyny are printing types (Offset and ???, checking Scott the sets listed as Melyny are described as photogravure)

And so on and soforth

Takes a little guesswork at times but for the most part catalogues are going to provide the same kind of information on stamps regardless of language, and after a few minutes of guessing and/or matching up things with English-language equivalents in Scott or Gibbons, most non-English specialized catalogs become pretty clear as to what they list.

And the benefits of getting more detail, better and more correct information regarding release information etc, definitely make spending a few minutes breaking the "code" of the foreign catalogue well worth the effort, in my opinion.