Digital Philatelic Workshop

Janet Klug, WE Think

(continuation of the article MS Publisher and Title Pages)

Publisher gives you a lot of ways to change the appearance without doing any of the hard work yourself. Publisher has built in color schemes and font schemes. I have found the color schemes to be very useful, and I enjoy playing with the font schemes, but most of the time I have to change the fonts to something more suitable and easily readable in an exhibit.

Still, it is useful to see what the Publisher designers have put together. It will give you a good idea of what font families and color groups work well together. You don’t get this sort of help from many other word processing programs.

Let’s look at the figure below. I’m working on a new exhibit entitled “Terror in the Jungle.” When it grows up it will be a display exhibit of the counterinsurgency by British troops in Malaya in the 1950s. With my title “Terror in the Jungle,” I envisioned the title page to be in “jungle” colors. I really thought I would have to do all the color customization myself, but Publisher offered me a color scheme called “Grove.”

Customizing Formats

I clicked that and the color bars magically changed to three different shades of green. It was perfect. It might seem a big leap going from the figure above to the figure below, but it really only took a couple of minutes. I deleted the picture of the sunset, but that area in the layout was a good place for a philatelic piece.

Jungle colors using the color scheme Grove

Measure Twice – Draw Once

I measured the cover I wanted to go there and then used the mouse to create a box slightly larger than the cover that would eventually be mounted there. A box outline appeared on the page layout where I had put it. I clicked the “lines” box on the tool bar at the top of the screen and then clicked one of the green colors from the built-in color scheme. Pop! My box had a line around it.

Adding Text

I got rid of the big “Heading” word, and created a text box above the horizontal line for the exhibit title. I inserted another text box for the descriptive text about the cover, just below the box outlined in green that I made to accept the cover. A third text box was made for the body text on the page; and finally I made a fourth box for the plan at the lower right. I added a matching green outline around that.

The completed title page is shown above. This sounds really complicated as I write this, but trust me…. it only took a couple of minutes to make the boxes and put them where I wanted them to go. The most difficult part of this entire process was writing the text to go in the boxes, but then isn’t that always the case?

OK, great. Title pages are a cinch. What about body pages? My next entry, Body Pages in Publisher, will cover them.

Albert W. Starkweather, Philatelic Communicator

In his article on digital references and studies, Francis Adams discusses useful software tools — optical character recognition (OCR) (ReadIris Pro OCR Software) and photo editing. There are great pieces of software available for both Macintosh and Windows computers, one free, that should satisfy the photo editing needs.

Olympus Master 2

Although Francis Adams is a proponent of Adobe Photoshop Elements and I rely solely on Adobe Photoshop CS3 Extended, there are alternatives. One of my favorites is Olympus Master 2, which is bundled with Olympus Digital Cameras and is available as a free download (www.olympusamerica.com). The program allows anyone, regardless of the camera or scanner they own, to view, organize, edit, create, share, and print digital images.

Although I normally would turn up my nose at such a program and had discarded earlier versions with previous Olympus cameras I have owned, I rediscovered Master 2 when a friend asked me to research Photoshop alternatives for a photo seminar he was preparing.

Olympus Master 2

Master 2’s editing palette offers resize, crop, insert text, brightness & contrast, color balance, tone curve, gamma, auto tone correction, hue & saturation, monochrome & sepia, sharpness & blur, distortion correction, and red-eye reduction. All of these steps display the original image side-by-side with the unsaved output. This is particularly useful to less experienced users who get visual confirmation of they changes they are making.

The program is well documented and its animated help guide is particularly useful.

This is not a program for those who wish to create complex photo compositions or work on images needing a great deal of correction. However, for the quality of images being produced by today’s digital cameras and scanners (Choosing a Scanner), Master 2 is perfect for producing print and on screen images.

Although Olympus also offers Olympus Studio 2, which offers more extensive image management, for $100, Photoshop Elements 6 at well below $100 is a far better deal.

Don Chafetz, Israel Philatelist

Before I start this article, a disclaimer. I own no stock in Apple Computer Company and have no relatives working for the company.

I was aware of Apple’s iPod Touch, but not especially impressed with it. At my niece’s recent wedding, I saw my two nephews playing with their Touch devices and asked them why they were so thrilled with them. They proceeded to tell me that they could get their e-mail, connect to the Internet and play games on the device. I was not impressed since I could do all that on my computer.

But, when my daughter surprised me with an iPod Touch, my tune changed. I started to experiment with its features and found out how invaluable it was. At this point, you might be wondering what the heck is an iPod and what is an iPod Touch?

As I understand it, the basic iPod is a small portable device that you can load music and pictures on and can carry with you anywhere. You might have seen young people walking around with earplugs and a small device strapped to their arm. It was probably an iPod or some version of one.

iPod Touch

A Touch is a type of iPod, but with the ability to connect to the Internet. A more advanced model is called an iPhone and it does everything a Touch does, but includes a phone and camera as well.

As a philatelist, why do I find the Touch so invaluable? On the basic level, I can connect to the Internet and have access to my e-mail and news anywhere in the house and anywhere outside the house that allows public access to the Internet. While this is nice, it is not the main reason why I am thrilled with the Touch.

What makes it so special to me is the ability it affords me to upload files from my computer to the Touch. (I purchased and installed a low cost program from Apple’s iTunes Store in order to make this possible).

As a philatelist, you may be wondering why is this “uploading” of files so important? Well, have you ever gone to a bourse or stamp show, seen a stamp or cover and wondered if you really needed it? Or have you examined a stamp or cover and then tried to remember if the stamp was a variety that you needed or if the markings on the cover were real or fake? With the speed and precision of a Super Hero, the Touch can help answer those questions.

I now can load reference articles, catalog listings and copies of my exhibits and “spare” material into my computer and upload the material to the Touch. So, as I sit at the dealer’s table or look at the exhibits and see something of interest, I just take out my Touch and open the reference document or look at the relevant image. Remember, knowledge is power.

As you can see from the picture the Touch is small enough to fit in your hand and with a case clip onto your belt. The battery life is around 4-5 hours and is rechargeable.

I strongly believe that the Internet represents the area of future growth for philately in general and the SIP in particular. In the very near future, the Society will be releasing its completely revised and updated web site. Among the many features of the site will be numerous articles, back issues of The Israel Philatelist, question board and e-mail facility. With a Touch or iPhone and an Internet connection you have the full resources of the SIP web site in your hand!

If you have any teenagers or grandchildren around, you probably have heard them talking about “social networking.” As I understand it, that can include instant messaging, Facebook sites and YouTube among the many websites. Whereas, in past generations we either wrote letters or used the telephone, the kids today use the computer and electronic devices for the same purpose instead. To my way of thinking, this electronic communication offers our hobby an opportunity to connect with young people and interest them in philately. How to facilitate that will evolve over the years, but we must now be thinking and planning for it.

I strongly believe that between the new web site and devices such as the Touch and iPhone, we will establish a connection with both the young and even most importantly, the middle age generations. That will be a win-win situation for them and the hobby.