New, Free, US Stamp Album Pages

Thanks Don!!

Don - One solution is to get rid of the blocked permissions so that users can overlay their own catalog numbers onto the pages. You are very close to useful product ....

I picked a random page to print (p33) and offer these comments (for pages printed direct from PDF):

1. For use in APP page protectors that are not punched, the pages are not centered.
2. The stamp images are about 15% too large and the actual stamps do not really cover the images
3. By blocking the ability to save each page as an image, you stop people from deleting the borders (why inhibit creative use of the product?)
4. Your outline for stamp space should be much darker and the images reduced saturation by 70% or so

Thanks for the input Richard.
1. This is an easy one, I can change the 'master page' and it automatically updates all the page instantly. As such, I'll offer a 'page protector and non-page protector versions. I also have some additional page border versions that will be released.

2. Well, rats. I thought I had reduced them enough, I use mounts so I missed this. I will see about updating this.

3. I debated with myself and lost this argument; I will remove the security in future versions. (I used to think I was indecisive, but now I am not too sure...)

4. I wanted to avoid making the stamp space outline too predominate, I reduced the line thickness down to a size which looks good on my laser printer but was fearful of making them too small for ink jet printing. The image saturation is not too ugly to change, I use batch processing on the images so I can change them without too much work.
Don

Don - On the stamp image darkness / saturation: If you have no stamps, you want the darker images. But, if you intend to really fill the pages, you want the border around your stamp that mimics a double matted frame ...

I worked trying something similar and got stuck trying to have a blackish gray "fill" between the central image of the stamp and a border outline that would highlight the perforations of the stamp - guess it depends on if you are putting on the pages well centered faultless stamps or off-centered.

THANKS!

Hi Richard,
My objective was to ensure that the stamp images were consistent across the page. Frankly this is very daunting task; consider a black stamp and a yellow stamp. Once converted to gray scale they appear very different, the black stamp will be dark and the yellow stamp will appear almost 3-4 times lighter. Another objective was to use an automated process so that I do not have to hand modified 5000+ stamp images one-at-a-time.

I did about 5 hours of discovery and testing on this process, I also did some testing on converting the images to line drawings which would remove the need to normalize the stamp images. While this worked, I thought the pages looked better with real images as opposed to the line drawings. If anyone knows a better way to normalize stamp images please let me know.

I also considered using a grey/black background but decided against it for two reasons. First the highlighting of the perfs works in both directions; looks great with a stamp with perfect perfs but looks bad with stamps with perf flaws. Second, this would greatly increase the amount of toner/ink needed to print the pages out. And lastly, I wanted to support the printing of pages on more than simply white paper. In my testing I found that using a darker background on buff or darker tan pages did not look good.

The 'look' of an album page can obviously be very subjective. I am doing the development work in Adobe LiveCycle Designer but am compiling them to static PDFs so the downloads are not huge (this embeds the images). I suppose I could offer a 'developer' DVD with the native Adobe LiveCycle Dynamic XML PDF files and images; this would give others a way to do some significant modifications themselves.
Don

Don, This is a 'GREAT' asset provided and I couldn't begin to imagine the effort to produce this. Thank you.

Back of Book section is now published; it includes Semi-Postal, Special Delivery, Postage Due, Registration Mail, Certified Mail, Parcel Post, Parcel Post Postage Due, Air Post Special Delivery, and Special Handling stamps.

http://www.stampsmarter.com/learnin...gesHome.html

Don

Very nice job on the pages, Don.

Thanks Don those are great!!!!!!

I'm very impressed with the pages so far. One thing I would like to suggest:

Could you add pages for the coil issues shown as pairs?

For example in the Washington-Franklin series, you have page 40 (and several others) that mix of Imperf and/or sheet perf stamps along with the coils.

If you adjusted a few of the current pages to group the sheet and imperfs, and had optional pages showing coil pairs, one could print either set of pages to match an existing collection.

As they stand, you have the coils grouped nicely, but not enough room available to mount pairs in the designated space.


Thanks for all your effort,

Brent

Hi Brent,
I will look into making a 'coil pair' set of pages.
Don

If I have corrections for the pages, should I post to the forum, or send via email?

Brent

Coil Pairs section is now published; it includes Regular issue coil pairs from 1908 thru 1976.

http://www.stampsmarter.com/Learnin...gesHome.html



Don

I notice that Officials and Newspaper stamps are missing fron the above list. Are they included?

No.

Doing Duck stamps now, should be published in next day or two. Then will move on to Officials and Newspaper stamps; targeting end of the week for them. I will then go back and do Regular issue 1976 to 2000 after that.
Don