Is There An Introduction Book With Scans For US Classic Stamps - And Why Not?

Color will always be a problem.
Color-aside, however, the Brookman book on The Postage Stamps of the 19th century, is probably the best overall (black & white) detailed intro to 19th century US stamps.

I have often wondered how accurate color comparisons could be made. As a photographer I have worked a lot with photoshop and color variations. Each color has a value for red, green and blue. .(RGB) what I am considering is scanning a stamp into photoshop, compare the on screen scan color to the actual stamp color, still subject to individual perception, then get the RGB specs for the scan. I should then be able to print on a photo dedicated printer, uses 11 different cartridges to duplicate the RGB values and print and compare to the original stamp. I imagine there are many others on this forum
far more advanced than I on this but am Interested in thoughts and comments on my process.

Are the inks guaranteed to be consistent over time? You can of course adjust the output, but matching becomes a real pain if the inks vary from batch to batch. I remember back when lithographers still did photography/platemaking for printing at a time when desktop publishing was still new and limited. Kodak and other film manufacturers started to vary the pro-grade film batch to batch (just B&W for process color) so that it required changing camera settings with each batch bought. The shop I used finally ordered a year's worth of film direct from Kodak to get consistency.

The other thing is the consistency and type of paper you are printing on. More and more optical brighteners are being used and individual reams I have bought over time were different enough to notice. Common copier paper of the same brand that I buy has gone from a fairly neutral white to bluish. The not-so-long term problem has been that the high end kaolin-coated papers I've used are no longer being made. Possible replacements are only available direct from the paper manufacturer in multibox lots so not even major paper suppliers will carry it. I could buy 5 reams if I had to, but not a pallet of boxes.

To paraphrase an old joke, a physicist would tell you it is imperfect so not reliable but the engineer will you it is good enough for many tasks.

But it would be nice to see a general book of classics.

US? That would be the The Postage Stamps of the United States by John Luff, available as a softbound reprint. It includes everything up to the Pan Americans including back of the book.

Don,

Could you create a virtual book on Stamp Smarter?

Hi Al,
Yes, and we could use uncompressed TIFF image files. But even if we can lock down representative source images there is still a huge problem with the pages being generated in accurate colors on each user's display device. If we make it were folks could print the book, we are still faced with the variances contained in every print driver and printer on the user's end.
Don