Postage Stamp Chat Board & Stamp Bulletin Board Forum
 

Sorry Glen I do tend to get carried away. Going to try that now

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I am having fun collecting WW and Indian States.

Doesn't seem to matter what I do I keep getting the message that "your images may only be up to 857 pixels wide" on the forum! Where am I going wrong. Shouldn't be this hard.

Found the 1200 dpi no problems with your help...thanks One problem down...heaps to go!

Maybe it's at the original scanning level. On your note you had it set as A4. I've tried a few different levels...all the same result. Any other option?

What if I try to downsize it on Photobucket? Would that work?

Anne

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I am having fun collecting WW and Indian States.

No idea what I clicked on but at least it has finally turned up!!! I think I downsized it to the third smaller size. Not intentionally but that is what Photobucket would only let me pick...It's very slow! Is it the time of night? Very busy?

Should I put it in a new thread now as there is a few questions I would like answered about this or just leave it here and ask away?

Anne

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I am having fun collecting WW and Indian States.

Hi Glen, getting very frustrated now. As you can see from the above scan, it has cut off over 1/2 an inch of the envelope...including the sheet number.

I tried this morning to start a new topic with a rescanned image hopefully including the numbers.

Have downsized it in photobucket right down to the 160 x 97. Still can't get it on to the forum! Still getting the message: your image may only be up to 857 pixels wide.

Should I go 'tiny' size? That's the last one left! Any ideas where to go from here?

Thanks.

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I am having fun collecting WW and Indian States.

Simple - you are scanning a white covver with a white scanner lid.

Never going to work.

Me, I use Chzug's tip to tape a large piece of black card to entire scanner lid then whatever I scan has a black background to it.

Place cover face down THEN add the BACK of a black Hagner sheet over top, and then you'll get it all in.

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Click HERE to see superb, RARE and unusual stamps, at FIXED low nett prices, high rez photos, and NO buyer fees etc!

I used Lide70

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Phila India
http://groups.google.com/group/phila-india

On the subject of scanning and getting a reasonable file size. I have not seen a mention in this thread (going back to 2009) about the effect of changing the colors when scanning. I use an HP Officejet J6480 All-in-One, and I get OK scans. I have the choice, using HP scanning software, to scan at 256 colors, or at "millions of colors" setting.

I assume, but do not know, that the file size at a given resolution would be smaller with a simple color palette - less data to store. Covers probably do not need a fancy color palette, while individual stamps probably do, for accurate color shade rendering. The 256 color option in the HP software defaults to a bitmap (.bmp) file format; .jpg is only offered for "millions of colors". When I crop in MS Paint, I convert .bmp to .jpg for compactness.

I need to make a direct comparison to determine if 256 colors is more compact. I know the color rendering is fine for my old covers.

Scanning Gurus - has this been discussed?

Bill (technically competent given ample trial & error)

Ugh. A 256-color palette is woefully inadequate for any kind of photograph. It's fine for clipart or logos, but not photos.

At one time one needed to be concerned with optimizing every byte out of an image's filesize, but file storage and bandwith capacities have increased so much in the last decade that cutting an image from 50k to 30k in filesize at the expense of visible quality is simply not worthwhile, in my opinion.

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www.revenue-collector.com - Member APS, ARA
Click here to see my U.S. revenue wantlist.

If I scan an A4 page (roughly the same as US Letter size) at 100dpi then the JPEG file size in full colour is only 300kb for my test page. I see no reason to bother trying to get that very small file any smaller.
Then again just playing with the scanner I can't adjust (using Paper Port), the colour range anyway.

For the the record the same page saves as follows:
JPEG 304kb
PDF 648kb
PPI 1mb
BMP 3.7mb
TIFF 6.9mb
all at 100dpi which is close enough to life size

When I scan a single stamp at 600dpi for good resolution and image clarity the file is only 600kb JPEG, which is still small for todays storage.

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Greg - Looking for Goulburn Australia Cancels and Grangemouth Scotland Cancels and Covers
Member of the S.T.A.M.P Club for Slightly Twisted And Mad Philatelists - Motto: "Bring back the lick!"

All right all you computer experts maybe you can help with this! I have bought a new scanner as in above thread...and am slowly working it out. It's going well. (I think). But, I was doing OK with my older 3 in 1 scanner on my old computer. Now the new computer (Vista home) won't let me download the disc to reinstall the HP program as I've not got administrative authority. Hello??? I'm the only one who uses this computer. I'm in the control panel as administrator and it still tells me I can't do it. This also happens with several other applications....how do you get around that???

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I am having fun collecting WW and Indian States.

I've never used Vista but I've tripped over the following in recent years ...

* some not particularly well written software won't install unless you're actually logged in as the user named "administrator"
* if you're a user who's just been placed in the Administrators group then it's possible that local (or perhaps Domain) policy is being applied to you and you're essentially an administrator with some restrictions applied
* some not particularly well written software won't install in a Domain context if you're not a direct member of the (local) administrators Group.

Instead of "double-clicking on setup.exe or whatever" or letting a cd/dvd start by Auto Playing try right-clicking on the installer application and selecting the "Run as Administrator" option.

Thanks rwlow0

Ah, that last one might be an option! Can only give it a try. Thanks for that

I'll give it a go tomorrow (too late now !)

Thanks again. Anne

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I am having fun collecting WW and Indian States.

Anne:

I get that error message sometimes when I try to install something in the C: root. Trying installing in an existing folder.

Bill

I have been reading this thread with interest but am confused by all of the Canon model numbers.

I notice on Ebay that there are many Lide 110 scanners available at a good price (around $115) whereas other models (like the Lide 700F) are around $240.

Is the Lide 110 a good choice or do I need to go for a more expensive model?

I would prefer to make the correct choice before rushing in and buying a scanner.

By the way it would be used almost exclusively for stamps, particularly for trying to help with watermark determination.

Thanks for any advice offered.

Hi garyterence01,

I use a Canon Lide 200 and find it great but (ain't there always a BUT) there program for getting your scans at the end to your "Documents" is

I use Adobe Photoshop Elements, and the two combined makes it very easy to use.

I think the price of the 200 is about the same price as the 110, I think Glen uses or did use a 200 model.

Best regards David

I had an old Canon that finally gave up on me but it did have a lot of previous use

The Canon Lide 210 I use now is great for what I want. All board stuff is done at 600dpi but the scanner can do 1200dpi if required.

I also use the Canon OCR software for scanning magazines, books, etc. then I convert them to Word doc.

Very useful when you have to scan German language stuff then try to convert it all using Google Translate

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Tony

My scanner is in terminal condition.

Any particular scanners that members find particularly good ?

Canon scanners are excellent.

I have an LIDE 210 which superceded my deceased Canon LIDE 20 that served me well for years.

That one was previously owned by the founder of Stampboards, so you know it was extremely well used

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Tony

Hutch,
Vista is difficult to use after Windows XP. For a first-time user is must be more difficult. That is why it did not last very long. I struggled with mine for a bit, but bought the upgrade pack to Windows 7 Home Premium version which is a great improvement. I suggest you consider that step.

Scanners? I bought a Canon LiDE 120 yesterday. Took me an hour or so of fiddling about, but the results are great. See the topic on plating Penny Blacks.

Need to buy a new scanner as Epsom can't provide a driver for my Perfection 1670. The generic driver is hopeless. Is the Canon lide 210 still a recommended scanner?

ken

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KGV tragic

???

I see all sorts of OS drivers for the Epson Perfection 1670:

http://www.epson.com/cgi-bin/Store/supp ... atform=All

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www.revenue-collector.com - Member APS, ARA
Click here to see my U.S. revenue wantlist.

Thanks, I tried them but when it comes to windows 7 64 bit they say not compatible. I rang Epson and they referred me to Hambrick a generic driver which is very basic.

thanks

ken

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KGV tragic

Ken if you are going to get a new one the Canon Lide700f seems to be the beast of choice today. More features, and is all I use now.

I bought 2 one for upstairs and one for downstairs office but do not use upstairs these days at all really, so will sell that for a decent discount if anyone in oz wants one!

Brand new, in original box, for you or anyone who wants it, at $50 less than best retail price you can find.

Glen

OK Glenn, I will buy but it can you send it up to me? I will have a look for a price and let you know

cheers

ken

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KGV tragic

Hello everyone!

I am seriously considering buying the Canon Canoscan LiDE 110 Scanner. Does anybody use this particular scanner or know anybody who uses this scanner?

It can fit full vario sheets and has great quality for the price and its portable.

Any thoughts, suggestions?

Thanks so much, Owen.

Hi Lakatoi,

How do you adjust the dpi. I just received my canon lide 210 today and cannot seem to make the dpi higher then 600. Thanks.

Owen most of the time dpi changes are done through the software provided.

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I AM ALWAYS IN THE MIDDLE
Post your KGV faults on the stampboard wiki.

As a newcomer to this Board and Forum, I have seen many interesting scans of individual stamps, covers and album pages.

I would like to post some scans of my stamps and, in a few cases, album pages. Can someone help me with the best options for quickly scanning stamps and album pages?

I have a regular scanner I use for my office work, but it is rather slow and will take forever to scan a large number of stamps. Are there any devices that can speed up the process?

To get the right quality there really is no substitute for the manual process of scanning and editing the resulting images. I scan my images at 2400dpi, as a general rule, and this can be quite a slow process.

The old adage of, "if it is worth doing, it is worth doing well", holds true in this case.

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Peter
Hawthorn - AFL Premiers 1961, 1971, 1976, 1978, 1983, 1986, 1988, 1989, 1991, 2008.

Agree Peter.

I am impressed by the large number of earlier posts on this topic and shall go through them to figure out what i can best do for scanning my stamps and album pages.

I agree. It's tedious. It's slow, but the end result is worth it (some of the stamp images I see posted on forums and on eBay make me shudder in just how horrible they are).

I don't scan everything at 2400dpi though, as that is extreme overkill for most of my purposes. I usually scan at 800dpi for single stamps and 1200dpi or 2400dpi for plate varieties, depending on how minute the detail required. Documents are a different animal. I've recently adopted the standard of scanning at 800dpi, copying out the stamp portion into its own image and orienting it properly, downsampling the original document to 300dpi, extending the canvas, and then placing the 800dpi stamp closeup above the document... that way I get the closeup details of the stamp without making the entire image insanely large due to the expanse of the document. Example here:

http://www.revenue-collector.com/zoomify/2620.jpg

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www.revenue-collector.com - Member APS, ARA
Click here to see my U.S. revenue wantlist.

As noted above, Canon seems to be the favorite. My Canon LiDE 120 works like a charm.

But I also want to add that the operating system you use is equally important to getting the thing to work correctly.

Windows XP was good but is dead, as are OS before that. Vista was terrible. Get Windows 7!

It's not the OP that will be the problem - I still have and use XP, Vista and Win7 on different computers with no problems at all with either. For the record I have never had a problem with Vista except for some older software ceasing to work.

However having a PC with a good fast processor and plenty of RAM is the key.


PS on another thread you asked about "black strips" used for scanning? Just stick a black page to the underside of the lid of the scanner (which is usually white) and you'll always have a black background when scanning stamps.

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Greg - Looking for Goulburn Australia Cancels and Grangemouth Scotland Cancels and Covers
Member of the S.T.A.M.P Club for Slightly Twisted And Mad Philatelists - Motto: "Bring back the lick!"

I use only a Canon lide, and always have. I cannot recommend them for stamps more highly.

However, works just as well with Windows as with Firefox.

Glen