What Is Your Favorite Tool/Accessory?

Wolf,

Did you add your 600 DPI image with the SCF image optimizer, or reduce the size from the original for uploading through SCF?.

As a test, here's my 600 DPI scan of a Q8 that appears to be about the same size as your stamp, linked through Imageshack, followed by the same image uploaded via SCF's image oprimizer:



SCF Image Optimizer image. Wow, It got bigger!

My 8X loupe, indispensable for plating.

I think I know what happened Classic coin. I used irfanview to resize my scanned image. I discovered you can't use the image size indicated to determine the actual size of the image you are trying to upload to SCF. 200K is the max size. I can't remember exactly what size it turned out being but it was something much smaller than that even though irfanview had it at being over 200k. I'm going to try some others and see what happens. Thanks for the input. Cheers! Wolf-==-

A few months ago I purchased via ebay one of those cheap LCD Digital Microscopes that takes pictures, video and can, if you so elect, connect to your PC for large screen viewing. What a WORLD of improvement over loupes, magnifying glasses, "grandpa" glasses etc. If you look for one, make sure it's from a US stateside supplier, NOT directly from China.

Thanks for the info Waazwi. I'm a coin collector, and may pick up a digital microscope for viewing my coins.

I agree with apastuszak that the laptop or the computer is my favorite tool; I create spreadsheets for my want lists. I was at a stamp show watching a seller trying to read a buyer's (engineer by trade) chicken-scratch handwriting.

My favorite tool is my old 50mm Single Lens Reflex (SLR) Nikon camera lens, that I bought in Vietnam. Makes an outstanding lens, used mostly for double transfers and other varieties.

Bought this camera back in 1968, camera I gave away, but kept the lens, works great.

Stampmaster

Stampwolf- Irfanview allows you to save a jpg with a limited file size. All my 200k image uploads here come from Irfanview.

Our member.

Postmaster GS "Stampfix" Deskewer.

has /will, save me thousands of hours of work.

Thanks, Rod! Are you still using the carousel feature of your scanning software to separate the individual stamps on the platen then running StampFix, or are you doing one massive scan and using StampFix to separate them?