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HOW TO BECOME A VIRTUAL PHILATELIST
Submitted by www.cyberstampclub.com
Index
PART I Introduction
PART II How to collect stamps on computer
PART III How to make your own virtual stamps
Coming Soon!
PART IV How to brighten up your e-mail with virtual
stamp stationery
PART V How to create a stamp slide-show
PART VI How to make a virtual, postal history, Family
Tree
PART I
Introduction
Virtual philately is a relatively new, though exciting
development on the web. It is an idea whose time has arrived.
Definition: genuine postage stamps, in mint or
used condition, which are scanned and transferred between
collectors electronically. They are collected for exactly the
same reasons as normal stamps in as far as their non-physical
form will allow.
Until very recently, computer hard drives were extremely limited for
storage space, scanning and imaging techniques were mystery sciences
reserved only for boffins, and file size technology was still in its infancy.
All the while, traditional philatelists persevered on the web, sending
up pages of boring stamp catalogue information for sale and swap, when
in fact they were sitting on the largest stock of graphic material ever
known to man …beautiful postage stamp illustrations – artwork
covering every conceivable topic and issued by every developed country
in the world for more than 150 years … zillions of them!
Not being content merely with the advantages of mass communication
and e-mail order processing off published lists, several stamp
collectors created web sites, but still used limited space for stamp
illustrations, mostly thumbnail size or poor quality GIFF files, in
order to preserve web space and to save bandwidth.
This is where things stayed until someone looked around, pieced all
the techno advances together, and discovered that most previous
"limitations" no longer applied – the doors to virtual
philately were in fact wide open. CyberStamp Club launched a site to
breach the gap.
Summary of Opportunities
- A 15 to 30 Gigabyte Hard drive is today regarded as standard
equipment. If you use up such a lot of space quickly with multimedia
– so be it. But if you now want to collect stamp images … great.
You’ll be hard-pressed to fill up your hard disc.
- Home Flat Bed Scanner performance is nearing professional output
quality …especially where files do not need high DPI (Dots per
Inch) resolution, unlike the requirement for printing purposes. Low
DPI on-screen definition is still brilliant.
- IT IS THE BALANCE OF VISUAL QUALITY AND ACCEPTABLE TRANSPORTABLE
FILE SIZE THAT MAKES COMPUTER STAMP COLLECTING VIABLE.
JPEG Compression, necessary for web production – is commonly
available in most paint programmes. We find, with most available
equipment, that you can reduce an original 1,5meg TIFF (Transferred
Image File Format) scan to a mere 20kb JPG and retain a high quality,
full screen image view.
With the luxury of the new breed of high storage hard discs, it may
not even be necessary to reduce the original quality TIFF scans –
you can extravagantly collect them instead if you wish. However the
problem arises in transporting such files, say as swaps,
by e-mail or FTP (File Transfer Protocol). This is where the current
standard of JPG file is useful ... just small enough to pass around
the internet in reasonable quantities … and large enough to see
without stinting on screen size, or showing distortion.
- Graphic programs can produce slideshows and visual presentations,
an ideal means to portray the miniature postage stamp illustration
art form. (Stamps are close to 35mm slides in actual size, and are
equally detailed studies at that size.) A well documented stamp
collection runs like a dream on a continuous, full screen
"slide show", with either manual or automatic settings for
presentation interaction.
- Imaging techniques and the power of on-screen magnification takes
over from the hand-held magnifying glass, now a virtual museum
piece. Full screen previews of stamps are amazing.
- Modem speeds have also improved dramatically
- Not many Web Site Hosts still offer stingy 10 to 50 meg sites at
premium prices. These can now be acquired free of charge at a few
community servers such as AngelFire. Webmasters do not therefore
have to limit their stamp illustrations to a few poor quality GIFFs,
although this mentality appears to be rooted in certain frugal
quarters. The only real limiting factor is page load time which is
associated with file size and content. New technologies are budding
daily to deal with this remaining thorn-in-a-webmaster’s side.
These advances have given the concept of virtual philately a
whole new meaning. The very root of the word "philately"
is the Greek "philo" for "free". Until
now the free collecting of duty based postage stamps has proved quite costly
for many. All that is going to change as collectors, battling to
keep up with the proliferation of stamps in any field, recognize that
the intrinsic beauty and design of today’s stamp issues really can be
appreciated for free. Virtual philately provides a far easier and
efficient way to participate in the ancient hobby of kings … still the
king of hobbies worldwide.
There are now so many postage stamps portrayed on the web there can
never be any question of original copyright. Only newer watermarked
scans may be regarded as the undisputable property of a particular
website owner.
Old copyright legislation usually relates to the reprinting of
postage stamps and then only if reproduced to the identical size. Anyone
who tried to prevent the depiction of the world’s postage stamps on
the Internet would go down in history as the second King
Canute,
totally overwhelmed by a sea of stamp images.
Because there are so many stamps available on the web today you are
quite entitled to "collect" them. Much of the older,
poorer quality material is rapidly being replaced through the deployment
of improved technologies. Therefore, you can create your own fantasy
collections … or simply produce your very own cyberstamps at home,
USING YOUR FAVOURITE SOFTWARE as a virtual stamp album. (See Part II
–
How to collect stamps on computer)
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