Discussion - Member to Member Sales - Research Center
Discussion - Member to Member Sales - Research Center
A while back we were talking about different types of album pages. Up until the time of that discussion I had been using a wonderful program called AlbumEasy to make my own album pages. The look of the custom pages was great, but it was a lot of work and often hard to do because you don't know the size of some of the stamps until you have an example of one. This discussion happened about the time that I decided to start getting my New Zealand hoarding into some order so that I could call it a collection. So I decided to try something different for me and give Bill Steiner's pages a go. Well I just want to let you know that I think that they are great. Here are three scann of pages to show you how they look.
Best regards ... Tim.
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They look great Tim. Does he also have pages available for U.S. specialty stuff?
Dan C.
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Hi Dan,
Here is a list of the United States pages that Bill has available.
Regards ... Tim.
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Beautiful. I like seeing others' stamps.
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Hi All
I too use Bill's pages .When he started to produce them they were free and you were encouraged to pass on the files as can be seen from this rider to all the countries.
Mine are for Papua New Guinea and My GB and India used in the Middle East and Africa.
He also did blank pages,allowing you to do your (own thing)
I have all these files on disk.
Brian
(Modified by Moderator on 2015-09-28 17:31:27)
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Bill revised the copyright notice a couple of years ago. He deleted "friends" from the notice. It also is now online and not included as the first page to his files. Here is the first sentence:
Copyright Notice. Your purchase of a website membership, or a CD-ROM disc, entitles you to use the stamp album page files for the personal use of you or your immediate family.
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I forget whether it was Mike or Randy who turned me on to Bill's work when I asked about foreign stamp albums. His stuff paired up with a digital copy of Scott 2009 has served me well for all of that stuff.
---Pat
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I have been using Bill's pages for several years and have always been very happy with the results. You have the choice to print just the pages that you want in your album and leave out the ones that may not interest you, such as the full page souvenir sheets that have a high CV and you will probably never own one anyway.
Mike
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Thanks Guys,
They really all look so good. So if I have this right Tim, I would need to buy a CD-ROM of the areas of interest to me, and then print them out as I see fit? This would be in lieu of purchasing actual pages already printed out? Or does that last option not even exist?
Remember I go back to the H.E.Harris days of buying supplements to current albums, so much of this technology is new to me.(Also remember that I am so far behind the times that our esteemed Secretary Perry fired me, and trained a chimpanzee to do what I could not)
Just saying!
All the best,
Dan C.
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Way back in 2005 or 2006 I bought online rights to Bill Steiner's pages for a year or so - I downloaded not the PDF files but the Adobe Pagemaker files and redesigned my own album pages. But then I swapped my PM6 with InDesign3 (paid a good amount of money for a single user whereas my PM6 was a 5 user licence)after printing out a few redesigned pages I started dreaming of a more grandiose album pages with the varieties listed to suit my way of collecting (coil singles instead of pairs, special issues listed on a separate page, etc) so instead of redesigning each and every aspect from Bill's Pagemaker files I started building my own pages in Adobe Indesign 3 with some wonderful results.
I still have those PM files for US, Australia, Canada, India, France, Switzerland, Germany and Great Britain - but these are incompatible with Indesign 3 and requires an expensive addon to transfer. If anyone is inclined towards redesigning for their own personalized album pages please check out his website for this type of membership - you must have the Adobe Pagemaker software for this.
But his pages are an excellent way to display one's collection in a simple way at a very low cost. There are many page designers helping design the pages for his website so if you can design you can probably get discounted or free membership even 
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"Secretary Perry fired me, and trained a chimpanzee to do what I could not"
Isn't that putting someone overqualified to do your work.
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Dear Saleem,
Exactly what Perry thought, but he had no choice
Dan C.
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10:38:30am
Dan -
You crack me up! Lol
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I did not fire Dan, I pointed out that the US Senate was an area of his expertise. However, Dan can make a decision on his own, therefore, he'd have to run as an Independent.
I still personally prefer to make my own pages, regardless of how nice Bill's pages look. Since I collect multiple types of memorabilia besides individual stamps I want them together because I collect by date.
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Dan,
You buy the CD and it has EVERYTHING on it. The CD contains hundreds of PDF files sorted by countries, years, and specialties. You then view the PDF that you need, and can print off the individual page.
I like this method because it keeps my foreign albums free of what would normally be thousands of blank pages.
---Pat
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If it wasn't for Bill's pages I probably would not be collecting stamps. I had a single-country collection with a Scott album when I "stopped" collecting in the mid-1980's. Although many (and perhaps now a majority of collectors) would disagree, I always felt a "true" stamp collection belonged in an album (as opposed to stock sheets...which I will admit have many advantages over albums). I found the Scott albums with the annual supplements too cost-prohibitive to expand beyond a single country (even though I "secretly" wanted to collect world-wide). When I "discovered" Bill's pages a few years ago they re-kindled my desire to expand beyond the single country. I now have modest collections of six countries, and have planned an expansion into two additional countries in the near future. I find that I enjoy the process of printing out the pages as I acquire the stamps, too. I don't have the Pagemaker program which permits modifying the pages, but I do like the fact that Bill also provides several styles of blank pages which you can use to add specialty items, covers, etc. to personalize your collections.
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Pre-printed pages are available if you do not want to print your own pages.
http://www.stampalbums.com/printed_pages.htm
I download the PDF files from Bill's website for just the countries and or years that I need and print them myself.
Have been a member for many years and overall I'm quite satisfied with his album pages.
Liz Jones
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07:47:54pm
Tim and Brian,
Beautiful album pages and stamps! I think I'll check out Bill Steiner's pages for myself. Thank you for sharing!
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I also have been using Bill Steiner's pages for several years since I got back into my stamps. I too downloaded the Pagemaker files and now have Adobe Indesign CS4 which will read them. I usually use the pages as they come but sometimes I want to re-arrange a page to add or leave something out so the Indesign program is good for that. For newer stamps that I didn't get the pdf files for I can use the existing pages to make new ones. I have even printed a pdf page where I didn't have a Pagemaker template, scanned it into a graphics program and changed it there to add or delete text descriptions or stamps on the page. His files are cheap for what you get.
Brian
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If anyone would like to have FREE pages for all USA, try this site;
http://www.philosateleia.com/
You can get pre-printed pages or just make your own how you want them.
It isn't fancy, but they are decent looking.
Randy
(Modified by Moderator on 2017-08-14 20:25:54)
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bought the cd when they were 25 bucks (US mint postage). It was great. kept in the computer ready at all times. made 15 albums. unfortunately all was lost in the fire.Will get another as soon i can a darn printer that works.
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You can add me to the list of "Steiner-lovers." (that sounds bad, but it's strictly platonic.) I was lucky enough to buy one of Bill's CDs when it included the Pagemaker files, so I'm able to modify the pages. (I have Pagemaker AND InDesign CS3)
For me, redesigning the pages is the key. I move all the stamp info down below each stamp, so you can still see it when you hinge a stamp in the album. And I add the SCOTT NUMBER, apparently a big copyright no-no, along with color info and whatever else I can find about a particular issue.
It's probably the biggest single thing that got me back into collecting... being able to design my own album pages. I'm grateful to Bill for making this stuff available.
Best
BG
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FYI, Bill isn't making the pages any more. He gets the layouts from Palo Albums, which he has an agreement with, and converts them to his page format. His pages still are great, and a big money saver.
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I thought it was the other way around. Steiner licenses his pages to Palo. I collect 1840-1940 WW, and the 6,500 Steiner pages for the classical era is then used by Palo for their classical era pages.
Is it different for the modern update pages? Steiner is not designing them anymore? Has he retired?
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I talked about the album pages with Palo. I was told that Steiner uses their page formats for his album pages now. At the beginning, Steiner and a few others created pages. However, Palo never used Steiner's pages.
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The 6,500 pages I have for the classical era are from Bill Steiner.
The Palo pages format is exactly the same for these pages.
Coincidence?
Check out any page between Steiner and Palo for any era.
I haven't found any that are not the same design format.
What came first, the chicken or the egg? 
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Alaouites- Palo
Alaouites- Steiner
Random example from my Steiner pages compared to a Palo page.
If Palo said they never use Steiner pages, they are being disingenuous at best.
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I'm just the messenger here. I checked on the original comment that Palo was using Steiner pages, and that is what I was told by Palo.
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No problem, Michael, it is Palo that is being less than forthcoming.
It is clearly in Palo's interest to minimize the fact that many (all?) of Palo's offerings are Steiner format pages all gussied up.
(Not that Palo's pages may be worth it for many collectors, with the pages - In color for Deluxe version - on nice paper on larger pages. 
)
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I ONLY use the Bill Steiner album pages, so he much be doing something right!
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I also have the Steiner CD and my son uses them. And yes, Steiner makes the pages and Palo provides added value.
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I have used the Steiner album pages since 1998, and I have a set of files from 2000.
These files have been excellent and I have used them to make a world collection up to 1960. I am very thankfull to Bill Steiner for his great work.
Normally I use Steiners original p65-files, which I edit in PageMaker. (Bold country name, descriptions in italic, more space between series if the pages allow it, .....)
After some years without stamp collection, I now want to make an album for Norway to 2014. But I see that Steiner does not distribute the p65 files any more.
If anyone here has some editable files of Norway after 2000 (norway20xx.p65), I would be very happy to receive a copy.
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I'm also using Bill Steiner's pages. When I decided to get back into stamps seriously, I was faced with the the decision to buy albums and binders, or to make my own pages. The cost of buying albums was prohibitive, and I have no design/layout skills. I also wanted to spend my time working on my stamps, not learning how best to design a page or learning design software like InDesign or any of the dedicated album page design programs.
As somebody said earlier, if not for Bill Steiner's pages, I might have decided not to proceed. But, for a $30/year membership in his website, I get access to ALL his album pages. I can download only the files for the country/date ranges I need and then print out from each file only the pages I need. The albums I'm building don't have any depressing blank pages. I've been very pleased.
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I use a combination of White Ace pages and pages I print myself. For index pages, cover pages, etc, I use 67 lb acid-free card stock. The 67 lb card stock is the same thickness as the White Ace pages and only 6c per page (as opposed to 65c per page for White Ace blanks). I use a 3/8" EK Success corner cutter (available from just about any craft store) to round the corners of the pages and match the White Ace pages.
I also add a hole-reinforcer to the back-side of EVERY album page.
If I were using Steiner pages then I would be tempted to use card stock, round the corners, and reinforce the holes. But maybe that's just me. I know how much I disliked the flimsiness of the pages on my old Minkus All American album.
I'm not sure this came across the right way. I'm certainly NOT trying to suggest HOW you should make your pages. I'm merely trying to relate what I've learned in hopes it may be useful to someone. Having said that, I must agree that being able to create your own pages is VERY empowering!!!
Lars
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Lars,
The 67 lb card stock would be about 9 mils thick. Is this correct? I just wanted to clarify. Thanks. (see chart below)
I would guess that anything above this would just be too thick/heavy for a stamp album? Would you agree?
One quick question: Do you know what the paper for the H.E. Harris albums ("Independence") are? I have 2 I bought at Hobby Lobby and I have a feeling that they don't meet the 67 lb paper threshold. I wonder too is that paper is acid free?
Adam
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"The 67 lb card stock would be about 9 mils thick. Is this correct? I just wanted to clarify. Thanks. (see chart below)"
I don't see a thickness listed on the package I use. It is Wausau Paper Exact Vellum Bristol 67 lb (147 g/m2) cardstock with 94 brightness.
"I would guess that anything above this would just be too thick/heavy for a stamp album? Would you agree?"
Not too heavy, just sub-optimal. You could print your pages on 110 lb stock and have a very sturdy album. The problem is that you will need an expensive printer to print very many pages or you will burn through cheap printers rather quickly. I find 65-67 lb paper to be the idea balance between durability and printability. However, if you were so inclined, you could create pages on 20-24 lb paper (common printer paper).
It's up to you to decide what works best for you. I can only tell you my experience and what I decided for my collection.
Lars
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I wouldn't recommend 20 lb. paper for album pages. Too thin. Many commercial album pages, like Scott International and Minkus are on 24 lb. paper. I use that type of paper when printing album pages, and even print front and back. No problems.
For the heavier paper as suggested by Lars, those are very nice if you are making special presentation pages. single/multiple small country albums, or a specialty album.
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Two Three points:
1. A large collection housed on 67 lb. card stock will take up a lot of space! Unless you plan on handling your pages a lot, a lighter-weight paper — 24 lb. — will do fine.
2. Heavy-weight paper can be very hard on printers. I destroyed the print drum on a laser printer by printing pages on 67 lb. card stock. In addition, that particular printer caused the paper to curl strongly towards the printed side. I had a heck of a time mounting an exhibit, because the pages would fall forward before I could lower the cover of the frame.
3. Hole punching album pages so they fit into a ring book is not a great idea. Even if you never look at them, which of course will not be the case, the holes will distort and eventually tear. Using sheet protectors is better. (I do wish to return to the "good old days". My dad used to own an office supply store and sold blank ring book paper which had holes reinforced by thin metal reinforcements.
Confession: I rarely print album pages these days. I keep nearly all of my stamps and covers in stock books and Vario-type stock pages, and only print exhibit sheets. For exhibits, I use light-weight paper for the most part, not because it's light weight but because of the colour or occasionally because of an imprinted design. (When an "experienced" exhibitor told me I had to use pure white or ivory sheets, I said (to myself), "That's BS" I'll use paper that looks good, not paper that will please judges!" There's this about "dirty old covers": they can look godawful against a pure white background!
Bob
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Bob,
Thanks for your comments. I kind of was thinking that 67 lb card stock was kind of overkill. I use sheet protectors myself with a 8.5" x 11" write-up on each stamp. I slide the stamp all the way to the bottom of the sheet protector. One stamp per page. It's ridiculous I know. One advantage is I am able to insert new issues by just inserting a new page. I don't have to shuffle all the stamps around when I fill in gaps in my collection. Plus if I have duplicates I can put them on the back side of the write-up (still inside the sheet protector). A major disadvantage is that I have too many binders, LOL. Maybe I'll switch to vario or hagner sheets with a mini write up on each stamp. I can see the advantages of it.
Adam
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"A large collection housed on 67 lb. card stock will take up a lot of space!"
Indeed it does!
The bottom shelf is just US, and it has grown by 3 albums since that photo. 67 lb card stock is the closest thing I could find to what White Ace uses for their pages and I wanted to maintain consistency.
"Heavy-weight paper can be very hard on printers."
You got that right! I NEVER print on anything that isn't direct feed.
"that particular printer caused the paper to curl"
Yup, gotta print on a direct feed ink jet - NOT a laser!
"Hole punching album pages so they fit into a ring book is not a great idea."
Works fine for me. 67 lb card stock won't tear very easily, and I add hole re-enforcers to the back of EVERY page.
I started with a Minkus album and didn't like the thin paper and the inability to lay the pages flat for viewing. I like the 67 lb White Ace pages, but you're right that the number of binders needed is excessive. You can only get 50-60 pages comfortably into a White Ace binder and slipcase. It takes 12 binders for US Commemoratives. The first binder covers over 50 years of Commemorative issues. The last binder covers only two years because I include imperfs. That's the real problem - the number of commemoratives issued per year since 1980.
Lars
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04:01:43am
Question:
I've decided to work on my Canada collection and chose Bill Steiner's pages. I've never used pre- printed album pages - I've always used my own or stock books.
So here's my question: I have both mint and used Canadian stamps. What is the best method of arranging the pages? They will be printed double sided as I've found that works fantastically on my own created pages.
But how do I arrange them? Chances are high I'll never obtain mint stamps prior to 1900. At the same time I do have both mint and used for issues from the Admirals onward - albeit mix and match.
So my dilemma is to how to set up the pages. My DDR is designed all in MNH and then separately housed are the used ones.
What about duplicates that are actually varieties of shades?
I'm thinking to simply use the blank pages for my FDCs and blocks.
All advice is welcomed. I think I'll be able to move through my Canadian material easier with the pre-designed pages.
I also downloaded the Russia pages but again I have varieties that are not listed in Scott.
Kelly
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The Steiner pages do provide spaces for many many varieties, and some items not listed in Scott. I cannot attest to whether the Canada and Russia pages include those.
Steiner includes blank pages that you can add a few lines of text to, so you can create a blank page for Canada, for example, and put a year and a one line description of the stamps to be placed on the page if the varieties do not already have a pre-printed page.
One idea on your collecting unused/mint and used stamps for Canada since you want to print two-sided, you could print the pages so that the pages where you'll place the used stamps is on the back side, and the unused/mint would be on the front. However, the same page would not be printed front and back on the same page.
You could do it like this:
First piece of paper: side 1 = title page; side 2 = page 1 for used stamps
Second piece of paper: side 1 = page 1 for unused/mint stamps; side 2 = page 2 for used stamps
Third piece of paper: side 1 = page 2 for unused/mint stamps; side 2 = page 3 for used stamps
etc.
That way when you open the album, the unused/mint stamps will always be on the right hand side, and the same stamps, but in used condition, will always be on the left.
Magazines are printed so that the desired page to be read is always on the right. You will find magazine advertising is cheaper if printed on the left hand page, because it is not seen first when the pages are turned.
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01:35:47pm
Thanks Michael - great idea!
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The only problem with double-sided printing of album pages is that stamps mounted on the back of one page will almost certainly impinge on stamps mounted on the front of the next page. I had this happen, but glassine interleaves solved the problem.
Bob
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04:40:54pm
Bob - you are right. I place mine into sheet protectors. I find this helpful for many reasons - 1) if hinging, a loose stamp will not get lost, 2) stamps will not be damaged either with mounts or hinges on facing pages, 3) prevents "over-stuffing" of albums. Just the extra air in the sheet protector helps remind you not to over-stuff the album.
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The problem with sheet protectors in this situation is that they're thicker than glassine sheets. Each sheet protected with sheet protectors will be approximately 20% thicker and heavier than they would be with glassiness to separate them from the next sheet. Also, I think that sheet protectors might not allow sufficient circulation of air, but now I'm just guessing.
Bob
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Just posted this to another thread, but it might be relevant to the discussion here since this is the paper I am now printing all my Steiner pages on…
Finally got my 'Goldilocks' paper that I'm very happy with
It is noticeably thicker than my previous 60lb text, but more flexible than the Staples 67lb cover stock. Here’s what I finally settled on…got it from Amazon for $23 plus free shipping, which I thought is a great price. I think I was paying about the same for only 125 sheets of the cover stock from Staples.
“EarthChoice Colors - Opaque Text, Cream, Vellum, 8.5" x 11", 70 lb. Text - 500 sheets (Domtar, 81077)â€
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I also use sheet protectors, they do have a very good advantage; you can turn the pages very fast without be worry for the stamps, if you want to make a quick search in an album it’s very useful. I print my pages on 1 side and I place 2 of them in each protector. I do it since 15 years and I have not seen any problem yet, but my stamps are in temperature and humidity controlled room. I place the sheet in Scott Int binders or the UA ( Unitrade one, they are very cheap here in Canada , less than $ 20 and it’s 3.5â€, cost less than binders)
I have all the pages up to 95 on their PageMaker format; I also have PDF2ID to open the PDF in Adobe InDesign. I need it as I have not let a single Steiner page original, all of them I re center the border and realign the stamps in the center , I need to do so as the page I place back to back in the protector. I also remove the expensive stamps that have no places. I also convert the se tenant, bloc of 4 and souvenir to single place holder, if I have a bloc or sheet, I just make a new page for it.
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"“EarthChoice Colors - Opaque Text, Cream, Vellum, 8.5" x 11", 70 lb. Text - 500 sheets (Domtar, 81077"
Chris- that is exactly the paper I use for my Steiner pages.
It is, as you say, just right.
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Hi All,
I've been playing around with modifying Steiner pages. I had always wanted some kind of title page for each country, but when you realize just how many counties there actually are in the WW album, that would be A LOT of extra pages if they were made as separate title pages. So, I tried to do something like this...going for the classic old time Scott album look (without having to pay for them
Wanted to get people's thoughts.
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Looks good but can I be a pain and point out that boarders in the first line should be borders (no "a").
I tend to do a separate page for my country detail, but a short notation at the head of the page works well.
At the end of the day it is what pleases you, and the layout can be plain or fancy depending on the need.
Vic
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Very good! thanks for the spelling correction. 
I collect WW (1840-1940), so if I were to do a separate country title page, that would add roughly 350 extra pages 
which is the reason I'm trying to combine it on the first page of the country.
While I'm at it, I'm trying to cut out any very high value stamps, which I'm not likely to acquire anyway, and group stamps together where I can so not to have 1-2 stamps on a page. This will save me at least 1-2 pages per country too, which will add up in the long run.
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Depending how you would break out the countries and other stamp issuing entities, there actually are over 400. My inventory list has 411 entities, and I combine many that others would not. If you also split out those entities that I combine and also the mini-states like in Germany and Italy, I believe your total jumps up to well over 500. You'd be using a couple of binders just for the title pages. It would look nice, though.
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"You'd be using a couple of binders just for the title pages"
Exactly! What I'm trying to avoid
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Just found an alternative to Steiner pages. I bought a few boxes a stuff at a local auction this week and got a box of old stamp magazines and found this.
Stamp Space Stencils. The price is excellent, only $1. This is from 1958.
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I would love to see SOR offering its membership (subject to some arrangement with Bill Steiner) a catalog of modified or should I say IMPROVED STEINER pages. I also modify his standard pages (I do it by cut and paste, when needed, occasionally merging free pages from other sources, and then making a copy or scanning it), but I can see that many here are MUCH BETTER than my approach, and have gone much further, and I would love 
to have then share with the rest of us. 
We could set up a special listing for Modified Steiner pages, here at SOR... referencing the original Steiner system or restricting access to his subscribers, to avoid bypassing his business model. It would be of great value to some of us!
rrr...
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I'm reading everyone's album page ideas and trying to figure out how I will do mine when I get to it. I do have my Ben Franklin display that won awards in the late 1970s. This was done on 12x12 pages, which was the accepted size at the time. I had an electric typewriter with a film print cartridge so my text was very good on my pages. This exhibit had been tucked away for years, but seeing my wife's scrap books, I realized those are also 12x12 so I bought one and now I have that exhibit in an album I can share with people. Hurrah!
Upon pulling out all my stuff, I think I've got a fairly complete 20th century collection through about 1980. I collected different things, and kept stuff I liked. I'm thinking I want to draw up my own pages on my computer. I want to organize my stuff by Scott catalog number and devote up to a full page for each stamp issue. For instance, on one stamp issue I saw I had collected four mint corner singles (the corners with no inscription), and a first day cover for that stamp. So that would be that page. The next page may be a used block of 8 that I saved because the postmark was done nicely. Get the idea? Each stamp would be represented by what I have on hand. I'm not anticipating buying anything until I see what I have. Get the concept?
I do like the idea of using page protectors, with two pages back to back in each. I have ones I bought for my postcard collection that hold 3-4 cards per page, the same company makes ones that hold an 8.5x11 sheet without perforating that sheet. I'll have to see how that would work.
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That's exactly what I do Tom, works well for me. I really like being able to slide a single page out to work on it flat on the table instead of curved from being attached to the album. I found a website that someone had photographed his entire album, and those pages can be saved and printed. Other custom pages I just make with a free program that almost duplicates them.
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Bill Steiner got started with his album pages project while he was still here in Indianapolis. I had begun a part-time business doing photo restoration and graphic design work for clients. In the late '80s or early '90s, I had also begun playing around with album page design in my spare time. I don't remember how I learned about Bill's project or the fact he lived just a couple of miles away. Since I was contemplating the design and sale of specialty album pages, I knew I should pay him a visit. We had a long conversation at his home one afternoon and I quickly realized he was way ahead of me and I'd have a difficult time selling the more elaborate pages I envisioned. I had three choices: forget about making any custom pages; make pages only for my own use; or use Bill's page components to redesign more elaborate pages.
I quickly decided to simply design specialty pages for portions of my collection from scratch using Bill's stamp box dimensions where I didn't have the stamps themselves to work from. He graciously gave me copies of his "User Edition" and "Designer Edition" CDs. Page development was a time-consuming process. In addition, work and other pressing matters intervened and I never got very far. I experimented with the Pagemaker 6 software, CorelDraw! 3 (Yes, it was THAT long ago!) and my then current version of MS Publisher. I think there were a few software packages on the market for designing album pages, but I didn't try any of them.
That was ages ago and I not only don't design album pages today, I don't even collect philatelic material any more. Life took a few unexpected turns and I had to make some tough choices.
As I slowly sell my accumulation of stamps and related material, I keep the high quality scanned images I produce in the process. They're a reminder of the good old days. Occasionally, I'll use a scanned image to produce a larger, clean digital image of a favorite stamp, sometimes "framed and matted," and post it on my Google+ page and on Doug's Google+ Stamp Collecting site. If you're interested in seeing what these look like, you can see them here. https://plus.google.com/b/101350885561904363309/101350885561904363309/posts,https://plus.google.com/b/101350885561904363309/101350885561904363309/posts (Edited 6/6/2019 to reflect the demise of Google's Google+ social media project and the loss of members' posts to that project.)
This satisfies my need to do something creative with philately and takes considerably less time than creating album pages. Even back in the beginning, Bill's work was very impressive. He was clearly very devoted to the project and he's done an amazing thing for modern philately.
Tom
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A few years ago I purchased the CD-ROM of WW pages from William Steiner. Worked out good for the area I was collecting.
Lately I have been collecting Great Britain 1840-1951 and wanted to put them in a hingeless album but the cost was just out of my reach. I decided to try and make my own.
First, I printed the pages I would need for the collection, Queen Victoria thru King George VI, only 18 pages. I am using Scott numbers.
second, I purchased a variety of Scott CLEAR mounts.
Third, I purchased a 3-ring binder from Amos, only $12.
I sized the stamp to the mount, then cut the mount at the top so it came apart and carefully placed it on the album page.
Hingeless Album for under $20.
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So Chris,
I am curious. How were you able to "play around" with the Steiner pages? From what I read on his web page, you cannot adjust the pages in any way.
It is this inflexibility that keeps me from taking the plunge.
David
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Here is Steiner's copyright notice taken directly off his web site:
Copyright Notice. Your purchase of a website membership, or a CD-ROM disc, entitles you to use the stamp album page files for the personal use of you or your immediate family. This is the only use you can make of the files or CD-ROM discs. You may not use them in any commercial activity, such as selling pages printed from the files, or reselling the CD-ROM discs. Also, you may not share the files or CD-ROM's with other people, such as a group of friends or members of your stamp club, even if you do this without charge. These same restrictions apply to any CD-ROM discs you buy from any of the Licensed Sources listed on the Printed Pages website page.
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Michael
You obviously cannot sell or give them away.
However there appears to be no restriction in what you can personally do with them for your own use.
So it would seem that "modifying" them is at your own discretion.
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Yes, I agree.
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I have a Steiner pages CD from this year, however, when opened with Adobe, conversion to word.doc or word.docx needs a paid subscription to Adobe.
I am unaware if any other programs will open the CD and/or allow copying, maybe someone can let us know.
The tedious way is to print off the page, scan it and then use paint or other such program to amend the page.
Vic
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Hi all,
I've posted on this extensively elsewhere, but what I do is easily convert Steiner PDF page files into Powerpoint files. This allows me to modify them easily however I want (add images, change fonts, delete boxes, move boxes around, etc.) without the need for expensive Adobe software or difficult to use Photoshop.
You might ask how to convert PDF to Powerpoint…well ‘there’s an app for that'
Chris
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Hi All,
Here's what I'm thinking about doing with my Steiner pages. I making a title page for each country with a map, some kind of historical photo, and a brief description of the country with anything particularly relevant to their stamps.
For the pages themselves, I changed the font type to something a bit more "classic" looking, increased the font size of the country title on each page, and removed the border.
Due to the sparse spacing of the stamps on a page, I can usually combine at least two pages of a country and thus the new title page doesn't add to the net total of pages for a country.
I removed the border mainly because I think it gives the illusion of making the page look bigger than the 8.5x11 size that it is (compared to the page with the border), but it will also have the added benefit of reducing the amount of ink used in the long run (or at least make up the difference of making the title size bigger)
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Good work, Chris! Not unlike what I was experimenting with several years ago.
Are these 8½ x 11? Punched or going into sleeves?
What paper are you using?
Borderless pages probably give you more flexibility for layout, too. And saving ink can be important if you're printing hundreds of pages. Good ink is expensive!
Feel free to share more pages as you develop them!
Tom
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Thanks Tom!
Yes these are 8.5x11 paper. Paper is EarthChoice (Domtar) 70lb opaque text cream. I collect WW classic pre-1940 so I don't use sleeves due to the added bulk. Pages are 3-hole punch and placed in Lighthouse Vario G binders.
Chris
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out of curiosity, what would happen to the collector who wished to sell his collection that was housed on Steiner pages? What is the legality of that collector, subsequent dealer, and subsequent buyer selling and buying said collection(s)?
David
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I would say that you are not selling the pages, you are selling the stamps. That's provided that the amount agreed upon for the sale was based on the market value of the stamps. If it was based on both the market values of the stamps and pages, maybe there'd be a problem.
I personally have never bought an album collection where I paid extra for the albums. Some of those contained Steiner pages. Usually the pages just get tossed away after the stamps are removed.
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David....
I don't read any prohibition in the copyright notice. The restriction is only against commercial selling of pages from the files. But you are selling a collection, right? You do not charge for the pages
There is obviously no commercial activity or sharing regarding the files themselves.
You have complied with the copyright since the files were for your own personal use while pursuing your stamp collecting hobby. I mean, you are not really in the business of filling Steiner pages to sell stamp collections on the open market, right? 
I could be mistaken, and there may be someone with a law degree that could argue otherwise.
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Should be no different than selling your collection housed in a Scott album, right?
What I do wonder about sometimes, however, is what if you add Scott# to your Steiner pages, which is ok since that is for your personal use. But, then years later want to sell your collection...any copyright issues there?
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"What I do wonder about sometimes, however, is what if you add Scott# to your Steiner pages, which is ok since that is for your personal use. But, then years later want to sell your collection...any copyright issues there?"
Same thing. You entered the catalog numbers for your own personal use with no intention of profiting from the use of those numbers.
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I use the Steiner pages and have been very happy with them. They have allowed me to only print the pages I need and to undertake the burgeoning task of collecting worldwide!
larsdog in a November 2014 post stated he uses a "direct-feed" printer. Can anyone enlighten me as to printer manufacturers and models on the market now that are the best ones for this method of album page printing? My printer, which is not a direct-feed printer, has difficulty with the cardstock I use and the inkjet-printed images aren't as crisp as I would like them to be, i.e. there is a bit of "bleed" in the printed image.
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JBaurch: I use an Epson WF-3540 "all in one" printer. Love it. Nice thing is that it has two paper trays so that I can have regular printer paper in the main tray and paper I use for Steiner pages in the alternate tray.
It is an inkjet, and it prints great. See scans of one of my pages in an earlier post in this thread.
Chris
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Chris,
Thanks for the suggestion. I'll look into it.
Jeremy
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I would probably use Steiner pages for some of my collections if not for that darned border. It creates centering issues at times that would be less noticeable. I like the open look of non bordered pages.
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Got a subscription after reading all this and downloaded my first PDF. Looks good (if not necessarily great) and what a time-saver compared to my DIY project using Powerpoint. My wife claims I wasted over $5,000 in billable hours for my Germany album (8% completed...) because I was too cheap to spring the $40 for the Steiner pages before today.
Dragging and dropping some images from the StampWorld catalog would really enhance this, but not sure it can be done while in PDF format. Any recommendations on a decent PDF to PowerPoint (preferred) or Word (second-best) app?
Thanks, Dave.
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"Any recommendations on a decent PDF to PowerPoint"
Dave,
I found this site. You drag your PDF to the site and click convert. It creates a PDF you can download.
https://smallpdf.com/pdf-to-ppt
I tried it with a two page pdf and it seemed to convert. I was then able to use powerpoint to Insert picture and resize it to fit the outline box. Select the box and photo and align (horiz and vert) then Group them.
Mikey
PS: I hope the link function worked. Never tried it before
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"My wife claims I wasted over $5,000 in billable hours for my Germany album (8% completed...) because I was too cheap to spring the $40 for the Steiner pages before today."
It is very rewarding doing your own pages. But yes, it takes time... lots and lots of time.
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Thanks MikeyToo. The smallpdf website converter worked fantastic on the 2 Steiner files I tried (75 pages and 36 pages). It allows you to do a maximum of 2 per hour for free which is more than you need if the plan is to then spend time customizing. I think it tracks the computer you're using as their is no sign-in required. So with 2 desktops, a laptop, and a tablet I can multi-task beyond my capacity to customize.
Thanks again for the awesome tip!
Cheers, Dave.
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It will probably track your IP Address. You can have 200 computers set up in your home, but you will have just one IP Address.
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"It will probably track your IP Address. You can have 200 computers set up in your home, but you will have just one IP Address."
Each installation of windows has a SID (security identifier). If anything is being tracked, this is more likely.
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IMPORTANT UPDATE:
I had only opened a couple PDF files before this, that just had album pages, but on the third one just opened now found a disclaimer page at the very top with this:
"You may NOT modify this file"
And from his Corrections section:
"If you spot an error in my pages, I'd appreciate it if you could send me an email...(and) I'll correct all the "errors"... "
I think that settles the issue. Converting to another format or using a PDF editor to customize for your personal preferences or even to make corrections errors is not allowed.
I would think then that we should all reconsider this issue and I, for one will simply email him with suggestions for enhancements rather than doing so myself.
Cheers, Dave.
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I just became the latest convert to Bill Steiner pages. Was getting a bit grumpy that I keep learning about countries that I HAVE to collect, but discouraged by the cost of albums, or the time involved with creating my own pages (something I just did for British Central Africa, and while the home made pages look good it is quite an investment in man-hours, and I am starting to get long in the tooth.)
The Steiner pages print out just dandy, and 3-hole binders do the job. I still have a few fancy-shmancy albums for Australia, Great Britain, and US, but henceforth, especially for the Dark Continent, it will be Steiner. $40.00 seems more than fair for all the world.
Cheers,
Eric
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I believe the comment about restricting modification (not much can be done about it for personal use - not enforceable and cannot prove loss of revenue, etc so no monetary gain) but is more about people creating derivatives works and then reselling them.
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Eric,
I have Palo albums for areas where I have significant stamp coverage, but use the Steiner pages for everything else in my world-wide collection. The Steiner pages are nice because I only need to print out the pages for which I have stamps. This helps prevent album-size bloat caused by having a lot of pages with no stamps mounted on them just taking up space.
The Palo albums are also nice in that I can order only the set of pages that I need, can get reprints or in the case where a mistake has been made on the original page when prepared, get a new corrected page without any hassle.
Both individuals (companies) are very easy to deal with thus making ordering anything from them a real pleasure.
Richard
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Richard, I agree with you about the Palo company. I have a few Palo and Davo albums and they are spectacular. But, going beyond a few countries enters the realm of spending more on albums than stamps . So from this point on it is WalMart 1.5 inch binders and Steiner pages. And that isn't bad, as others have opined. I just started collecting British Colonial Africa, so those WalMart binders are green -- like the primordial jungle.
E
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I was buying the Staples heavy duty 1.5 inch binders for $8 each, with their private label. Then I saw exact same binder at Walmart under the Avery label for $3! Obvious who was making those private label binders! At least I was buying them with Staples Rewards money earned with the enormous printing bills I get for my clients!
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Steiner's pages have been extremely valueable im my creation of a worldwide collection.
But I always edit the pages. Here is an example why: An edited page:
compared to the corresponding Steiner page:
The main difference is the Tourist Series. These stamps come from booklets in pairs without perforations along the sides.
So, while the European albums always have double space for these stamps, Steiner has space for only one stamp. And most Norway collectors will look for alternatives to Steiner.
Other Norwegian booklet stamps have pairs with diffeent stamps printed together. We generally prefer to keep these at pairs, but Steiner uses separate frames for each stamp.
I have the original Steiner PageMaker files up to 2000 and edit them with PageMaker7 from 2002 (still possible to download a 30 day trial version from Adobe) The newer files are only available as pdfs, which are not so easy to edit.
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"The newer files are only available as pdfs, which are not so easy to edit."
Ah, the critical point! If indeed Steiner pages were editable, I'd sign on instantly. I like the idea of having defined pages, but with the option to move things around to my liking, or to add pairs, blocks or covers as my collection dictates.
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You CAN edit the pdfs, though it is not as easy as with the PageMaker files.
One method is to convert the pdf to a PowerPoint file, as suggested by ChrisW in this thread. Then it is easy to change text or stamp frames, and to delete or add frames and borders.
Another method is to edit a pdf directly. In this, the free Inkscape seems to be a very powerful program. However, I am only able to open one page at a time for editing.
And there are other pdf editors, but I'll go for the PowerPoint method.
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You can open a PDF directly into LibreOffice Draw (no manual converting). The text is usually preserved but the downside it is character by character. You can remove and add a new text box.
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Yes, Steiner pages can still be easily modified. See some of my posts earlier in this thread.
If you have the expensive Adobe Pro software, you can directly edit the PDFs. But, I use PowerPoint instead. There are Apps out there that will convert your PDF file into a PowerPoint file. At that point, you can easily modify how you want (change font, add/delete stamp boxes, add text, even add historical photos or images overprints, etc). I then "Save As" back into PDF format.
I have also made files with either the Scott International or Scott Specialty borders.
Chris
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Adobe LiveCycle Designer opens multiple PDF files for editing and supports much more. In fact, it support the addition of external data sources as fields in the PDF. In other words, if someone had the desire they could add catalog number support to something like the Steiner pages. (Why Bill doesn’t do this is beyond me since it would make his pages an ‘album publishing killer’ solution.) As we all know there are copyright issues with the various catalog publishers. But if a set of page simply supported an external data sources (like a Excel, CSV, or XML file) users could simply add whatever catalog (or their own) numbers they desired to the PDF. The PDF would ‘merge’ the album pages and the data source file together at time of printing. The PDF pulls the catalog numbers from the other file as it prints. It only took me a few minutes to make this work Adobe LiveCycle Designer and a set of Bill’s pages.
And since ‘self-printed’ pages and albums have become quite popular, paper selection should be considered. Everyone knows to look for ‘acid-free’ but fewer folks know what this really means. There is no industry standard for ‘acid free'; paper manufacturers use the term ‘acid free' simply because they do not add any acids during the production process and/or add some Calcium Carbonate for buffering. How much they add, how ‘acid free' the paper really is can be anyone's guess. Throw a bit in there, and you can sell it as 'acid free' paper.
Paper, like water, has the ability to hold buffer in reserve. As time and environmental conditions evolve, the buffer that is held in reserve can be drawn upon to neutralize the paper. It might be able to neutralize the paper for 10 years, it might be able to neutralize the paper for 1 year. And the ability to neutralize is impacted by the environmental conditions. If there is high humidity and temperature conditions, or if there are large variations and swings in the temperature and humidity, the need to consume the remaining neutralizing buffer reserves is much greater.
You can also find a large amount of paper marketed as ‘acid free' even when it includes recycled wood fiber! Any time you have wood fiber in the paper it means that there is pulp and the resulting Lignin. Lignin is the ‘stuff' (organic substance) that binds cells and fibers in wood. It is the source of the acid. If you have Lignin in the paper, you have the potential to produce acid over time.
This is the fallacy of acid-free paper marketing; how much buffering a paper may contain to neutralize the acidic Lignin organics is undefined. The paper can also still contain a substantial amounts of Lignin. Using the cheapest ‘acid-free' paper you can find and thinking that you are covered for decades is going to cause you heartburn at some point. With paper you pretty much get what you pay for, be prepared to spend some money if you want good quality paper.
If a hobbyist is going to time and expense on printing a large amount of albums pages, they might want to consider true archival paper. Look for paper buffered with at least 2-3% calcium carbonate, has a cotton content of 25% or greater, and it should only contain high alpha cellulose pulp from purified wood fiber (contains no Lignin). Then store albums and stamps in environmentally controlled areas. Heat and moisture accelerate the chemical reactions that cause paper to deteriorate, and high moisture levels can result in mold growth. A cool, dry and stable storage environment is paramount; temperatures should be held at a constant 70°F with a relative humidity held between 30% and 50%.
To learn more you can check out these links
http://www.loc.gov/preservation/care/paper.html
http://www.niso.org/publications/tr/tr01.pdf
Don
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I sort of edit my Steiner pages in photoshop and remove what I don't need and copy and paste from other pages to get it the way I want (with the help of my grandson)
Here's two pages we did ,As I only collect the Malay Tigers We rearranged the pages to suit.
Brian
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A couple more pages of mine in which I edited Steiner pages using PowerPoint.
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Very nice work on those pages Chris!
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Has anyone replicated a Steiner page in Scribus?
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Yeah, Chris, those are my kind of pages. Love 'em!
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"Has anyone replicated a Steiner page in Scribus?"
AlbumEasy includes a sample album file called SteinerExample that can be used as a template for replicating Steiner pages.
Clive
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I ended up making my own template (same border, spacing from edges). The font show in original is Helvetica but looks like Arial is what is in the PDF.
Image link no longer valid
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There has been renewed interest in discussing the Steiner pages. I thought I would bring this thread back to life as well. It is full of information relating to the pages and how various people use them as is or modified.
I do have a question relating to modifying the pages. Many pages, especially in the back-of-book area have just one or two stamps on a page. If you have four pages like that, then there is plenty of wasted space on the paper and in the album binder.
I have tried this, but haven't been able to figure it out. Using my example, is there a way that I can take page 1 and edit it by blocking and copying the spaces for the other stamps from pages 2 through 4 onto page 1? Right now what I have been thinking of doing is to simply mount the other stamps in the blank space below the printed spaces.
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I haven't tried modifying Steiner pages on the computer, but I am not above employing scrapbooking techniques -- as barbaric as that sounds. This particular page is a bit garish, but you get the idea, the image is just for demonstration purposes. The choices of scrapbook papers is inexhaustible and can be applied judiciously with a glue stick. On rare occasions I have done this to cover spaces for stamps I have no interest in collecting, or to cover damage on a page. Not a standard practice for me, but comes in handy.
Love the Steiner pages, best $40 I ever spent. (I think it was $40)
Eric
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The most reliable and faithful method I have used and seen is to convert to a powerpoint and then modify. You then can move or add objects (shapes, text boxes) to customize.
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There are basically three ways to generate a PDF file.
1. Use a PDF publishing application which specifically outputs a PDF
2. Use some other application which can ‘Save As’ a PDF
3. Use some other application which can ‘Print As’ a PDF
PDF which are made using either #2 or #3 are a bit of kludge. Think of them in the same way as if you printed a hard copy, then put it on your scanner and saved it as an image file. When you open a PDF file which has been generated this way the opening application tries to ‘deconstruct’ the image into various pieces and parts. It typically can figure out which elements are ‘text’ and which elements are graphical.
But if the original PDF is generated using #1 above, then it opens a wealth of features and capabilities.
For example, say you draw and define a standard sized box outline for a commemorative stamp. Being a commemorative, this box is used on 753 different pages in your PDF file. But you would now like to slightly change the dimensions of the box increasing its height by 1mm. In a PDF publishing application you would simply make the change to the template and every page is automatically updated. Same for a page border, update the master page every page gets the change. Say you want to add page numbering to every page; takes seconds to add this to a master page so it displays on all 753 pages.
There are even more powerful feature that can be used with a PDF publishing application like ‘data connections’. Steiner obviously does not want to license catalog numbers. But he could have developed his pages ‘data connected’ with another file like a spreadsheet. A hobbyist could then add/modify the spreadsheet with whatever catalog numbers they wished. When the PDF file opens, it connects with the spreadsheet and automatically inserts the catalog numbers under each stamp. This allows for any catalog numbers the hobbyist uses to be assigned and removes any licensing requirement from the PDF publisher.
Editing PDFs has a lot to do with how the original PDF was generated or if you try to bring it into some third party app like Power Point, the app simply tries to convert the elements it can figure out. Simple tasks like ‘copying and pasting’ a few boxes or making a few changes to a page then this is easy and an app like Power Point will do the trick.
But if anyone is going to trying to modify hundreds of PDF pages I recommend spending a few dollars and buying a real PDF publishing application like Adobe Live Designer. If you think you are going to spend more than 25 man hours doing editing/modifying PDF files than the return on investment is justified.
Don
Some screen shots of a Steiner page being edited...
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Thanks for the tips and advice. Right now I pretty much do it the way Winedrinker does, except I place stamps in the blank space to cut back on the number of pages.
I have tried converting the pages to PowerPoint, but it doesn't permit me to block and copy large areas of a page and paste it all on another page. I wouldn't be doing this enough to justify buying an expensive program, but using the program online to convert as Ted said, only lets you convert two files per hour. I need more flexibility than that time restriction.
I have a CD-ROM with license of Adobe Acrobat 8 Standard, but I can't get it to install in Windows 7. I was hoping to use that for this purpose.
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Is it 64-bit Windows 7?
Don
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I believe it's 32.
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Don, do you mean Adobe Livecycle Designer? If so, it looks like part of an enterprise package and something like a plug in to Acrobat. I did not see a price for it.
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Hi Al,
Yes, it is a stand alone application that comes bundled with Acrobat. It is also great for making interactive PDF forms; something that few people do in our hobby. Anytime I see an PDF form which needs to be filled out I am amazed that you often have to download it, print it, and then fill it out by hand. Welcome to 1999.
The beauty of a PDF form is that you can set it up to be filled out on the device, just type in your name in that name field on the form. But the PDF form has to be setup in an application like LiveCycle Designer.
Don
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"I have tried converting the pages to PowerPoint, but it doesn't permit me to block and copy large areas of a page and paste it all on another page. I wouldn't be doing this enough to justify buying an expensive program, but using the program online to convert as Ted said, only lets you convert two files per hour. I need more flexibility than that time restriction.
"
Michael,
I'm not sure what you are talking about here. once you have it in PowerPoint, there's no reason you shouldn't be able to copy and paste anything on the page. Also, the converter I'm using converts the file in a second or two.
By the way, I have written a tutorial on all this as a guest post on Jim's BigBlue 1840-1940 blog. It is scheduled to come out on September 20th.
Chris
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When I did conversions, you could transfer elements. Text was in text boxes and shapes (like the spaces for stamps) were either individual or grouped. It can vary depending on which online tool you use since some are a lot better than others.
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There appears to be many many different programs and apps for converting PDFs to Powerpoint files. There are many available in the Apple App Store, some free and some cost a few dollars. If yours is taking more than a second or two to convert or not allowing you to select certain items, etc., I would just try some others. You should be able to easily move stamp boxes from one page to another in order to combine pages.
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I had posted this on SCF but shows a test of taking a Steiner page in PDF and then converting it to PPT.
Original conversion (ppt screen shot). The converter I used was very faithful on a complete country I used (Labuan).
After changing page properties to larger paper - if you change properties everything gets scaled (expected per Microsoft)
This is after copying elements from original conversion to larger format. The border was put in the PPT master page so it takes 2 copy / paste actions (1 to copy border, 1 to copy all elements). I did not attempt to spread anything out and would suggest just using your own border but shows extra spec on Scott larger page size.
I am not saying this is a good idea for a large number but it can be done.
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What Chris and Al are saying is key, it is ALL about the conversion.
First, we should understand what the PDF format is and what it's purpose was. The overriding part of the original PDF specification was that was intended to make a document 'look' the same no matter device it was displayed on (hence the PDF name; Portable Document Format).
The reason that the future of PDF looks so grim today is exactly because of this, when PDF was first developed it was for nice, big computer monitors. No one knew at the time that the entire world would soon be using mobile devices to access their information. So right now PDF format is in trouble, it simply does not scale to being displayed on small displays like tablets or smart phones. It is about as far from being 'portable' as you can get. No one currently has a way to make a PDFs display properly on a mobile device so the future of the PDF is very much in question.
If you go to display a PDF on a smaller screen there are two choices; either force the user to endless scroll back and forth or shrink the page so small that the user cannot even read it.
When we generate a PDF it has to make itself 'look' the same on any operating system, viewer, or device. It is supposed to retain the fonts, white space, and all other formatting. But, for example, you cannot count on a certain font being installed on every device. So the typical way to make sure that this happens is to simply convert the entire document into a image. We have all seen PDFs which were nothing but a large image; you cannot search this kind for a certain word because there are no words, it is a picture. If you try to 'select' a sentence it instead draws a box around it, you cannot select a word(s).
But you can later add OCR (optical character recognition) to a PDF so that users can search and select words. OCR recognizes the text and adds this information to the PDF file but retains the original formatting. PDF like this are still images but now have added additional text information.
And of course this is the issue with trying to print PDFs on page sizes different than the original design. If you try increase or decrease the size of a page it will usually scale the graphic elements too (just like any image). This introduces a huge issue if you are trying to maintain the original dimensions of a the boxes around a stamp on an album page.
So now along comes Joe Stamp collector who would like to convert back the PDF to another file format to make it editable. Obviously if the PDF was originally developed in a native PDF application this would not be so hard. But the trouble with the Steiner product is that he did not do this, his pages are images.
Bill did no one any favors by generating these pages as images. It could be that he developed his product the right way but compiled the PDFs to be images (to prevent users from editing them easily) or it could be that he was clueless and did not know how to properly develop PDFs. But what we have now are users trying to reconvert the images back into something editable. This leads to all kinds of wrinkles and unexpected results which are completely dependent upon what you use to convert. No two tools/apps will convert things exactly the same way.
Chris mentioned he was writing an article on how to do this. Unfortunately his article will have to either be huge (include instructions for the 40-50 possible ways that could be used to reconvert from PDF to PowerPoint) or only describe the basics and let users struggle trying to figure out the details.
Don
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Unfortunately, when I wrote my article, I didn't really fully appreciate all the different converters that were out there and the fact that they all worked slightly differently. So I didn't go into that aspect at all, but only talked about how I did it using the free converter that I got from the Apple App Store a few years ago (which appears to no longer be available).
Chris
P.S. my guess blog post will come out September 20th on Jim's BigBlue blog.
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An the issue that I have seen mentioned frequently in designing your own albums is that of determining the dimensions of stamps. I was one of Bill Steiner's volunteers about 15 years ago and a major part of the task of laying out an album page was measuring the frames from an existing album. If you're designing an album for stamps that you don't currently own, you have the challenge of finding the dimensions of the stamps. In some cases the dimensions are available from websites such as colnet.com. However dimension information tends to be somewhat spotty. In attempting to find a solution to this challenge I developed a method for extracting the frame dimensions of Bill Steiner's PDF files. As an example I have extracted the frame dimensions for the Australia album in the classical era section. Here is the a link to the CSV file which I created. It shows the frame dimensions by page, row and column.
https://sites.google.com/site/hfbaker/home/australia_classic_dimensions.csv
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Very nice job extracting the dimensions for the Australia stamps.
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"An the issue that I have seen mentioned frequently in designing your own albums is that of determining the dimensions of stamps.
...
As an example I have extracted the frame dimensions for the Australia album in the classical era section. Here is the a link to the CSV file which I created. It shows the frame dimensions by page, row and column."
hfbaker,
Great job extracting the dimensions, as you rightly state determining dimensions is probably the hardest part of laying out an album.
In the case of Australia however, you can download a complete Australian album from 1913 to 2006 as a text file including dimensions ready for processing with AlbumEasy or as a final PDF here http://www.thestampweb.com/albums.html
Clive
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Clive,
Unfortunate that I picked a country that had already been done. Should have checked your website first. I am a big fan of AlbumEasy. I am starting to get reinvolved in Album design and AlbumEasy is definitely my tool of choice.
If anyone is starting a new album project and you need frame dimensions, let me know and I will extract the dimensions from the relevant Stamp Album Web PDF file.
Harry
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Hi, I'm new to this forum. I ve used Bill Steiner's pages during the years and I find them very useful. these days though he has been having a problem(?) with his website and all the info in the downloads section seems gone. this is the message you see when you try go in the download section:
Database Results Wizard Error
The operation failed. If this continues, please contact your server administrator.
Bill doesn't answer emails.
Did anybody here have the same issue and since how long?
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Luca
There is already an existing thread on the Steiner Access Issues
Regards
Richmond
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ok Thanks, i realized Bill answered me to an another old email address of mine . he said probably the issue will be fixed in a few days, thanks
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I am probably one of Bill Steiner's biggest fans. I'm also my own worst enemy in that I take out a subscription with Bill, download the pages that I think I need at the time and then before I realize a year has gone round and my membership has run out. I think I have done that four or five times now. So I bought the CD of all the pages. I am interested mostly in the earlier stamps so hopefully the CD will do me for a while.
Tim
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I have the CD as well but for $50/per annum will renew my subscription every year as a thank you or the excellent service that has been /is being provided.
Also can I recommend that all things Steiner are given their own Topic within Stamporama.
Regards
Richmond
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I had subscription a while back and downloaded everything including his Page Maker files. I decided to renew and get a fresh set although his PM files are no longer available. My concern that if something happens to down the road these may disappear.
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"I am probably one of Bill Steiner's biggest fans. I'm also my own worst enemy in that I take out a subscription with Bill, download the pages that I think I need at the time and then before I realize a year has gone round and my membership has run out. "
I did the same thing, but now there are some areas that I need that I didn't originally download. I need to just buy the CD so I will always have it on hand.
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My Steiner cd was purchased in 2013 or 14. (GB goes to 2013 inclusive)so it's about time to pay again.
Does anyone with a more recent version know if he has set pages up for the individual stamps where currently he only has a space for the sheet or block of stamps, example below.
It would be good if he had both pages but maybe he now has?
Ps mermaid alert for larsdog
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I got my Steiner CD last November and the page has not changed.
The Flowers is a booklet pane and not individual stamps.
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Thanks Angore, fine if you are collecting them mint but used booklet panes are few and far between and would be mostly contrived.
Guess I'll just have to use the blank pages and appropriate headings or Albumeasy.
Thank you for the input.
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Yes, most modern albums expect you to collect mint so spaces for whole booklets or strips are typical. The Mystic US album mixes often breaks them up. The problem is with self-adhesives in general. They sometimes do not work with either together or apart when in Mint condition (still on backing).
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I was curious, what color paper do you all prefer for your Steiner pages? White, cream or ivory? I noticed Sam’s Club has white and ivory colored packs of cardstock for a good price. But I wasn’t sure if ivory is too yellowish.
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I use cream pages - Domtar Earthchoice 28/70. The way my page count is growing if I used any thicker stock I would need a lot more binders.
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What year is your CD? Mine is from 2017, and Indonesia goes all the way to 2014. If you are doing a search, make sure to remove the underscore after "Indonesia" in your parameters.
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I had looked at Steiner's web site and Indonesia and Malaysia was fairly complete in 2003.
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I have used Steiner pages for quite a few years. I was able to buy Pagemaker 6 or 7 and then upgraded somewhere along the way to Adobe InDesign CS4 (CS4 is now well past eligibility for upgrade at reduced price but I'll never need anything more). I likely use a very small part of InDesign to make my pages but with the little I know of it I can edit all the pagemaker files, re-arranging, adding labels, catalog numbers, dropping souvenir sheets from most pages since I rarely come across them. Se-tenant blocks can be handled with labelling and adding sub-dividing lines in the boxes for the individual stamps.
I handle the more recent pages where I don't have only pdf files by first breaking the file down to 1 page per file using a free PDF-XChange Editor. Then I can place the individual page pdf on a page in InDesign and I use it as a template for a new page in InDesign CS4. That is often as fast as editing the original pagemaker files.
As has been said before, the Steiner pages are worth it.
Brian
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I'm using Steiner pages for last few years now. I am collect WW so am looking at a lot of countries. I like that I can pick the ranges I need and skip the rest until I may need it. I started with 3-ring binders but found it pretty difficult. I have a comb binder from an old business and now make single country binders as needed. Working out just fine for me. It allows me to create and add additional pages I want to customize my collection.
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After a bit of adjustment I was able to get the Steiner pages to print on blank Scott Specialty pages. I changed the Arial font to palatino linotype to better match the Scott font. I resized the pdf page to 11.65" x 10.25" to center within the borders. The bottom margins are a bit tight, but most of the Steiner pages are not quite as crowded. I picked this one because I knew it would test the limits.
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hfbaker,
Are the stamp boxes now larger since you enlarged the PDF?
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04:00:59pm
Is there a record for most views and most posts on a single thread? This must be close! I just added one more!
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"Are the stamp boxes now larger since you enlarged the PDF?"
The software I use to increase page size has the option of maintaining the size of the contents. So the box sizes are the same.
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What printer do you use to print the over-sized pages?
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Your page turned out very nicely. I think you are definitely on to something with your alterations to the default Steiner pages!
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"What printer do you use to print the over-sized pages?"
Canon Pixma Pro 100. I've noticed the price of wide format printers has come down significantly in the past few years.
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Thank you. When I was shopping for a new printer I didn't like how the large format printers printed. Your's I don't remember as being available, or at least i did not test it out. I will keep it in mind for a future purchase.
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Very interesting discussion, with lots of excellent advice.
Is there a way to use the Bill Steiner program to create Art on Postage Stamps pages?
I'd think someone has created pages on that theme.
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Steiner pages include a group of blank pages. Most of the templates let you create headings of different numbers of lines. The title page templates let you add text information. You would need a page editor to do anything else, like create spaces for stamps.
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"Very interesting discussion, with lots of excellent advice.
Is there a way to use the Bill Steiner program to create Art on Postage Stamps pages?"
It might be easier to create the pages from scratch.
You could use, for example, Microsoft Word, PowerPoint, LibreOffice Draw, etc.
or a dedicated program such the free AlbumEasy - see the link in my signature.
Clive
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Here is a style guide to Steiner pages. Most measurements were using software to check shapes. Early Steiner PDF's embedded Arial MT for the original Helvetica. You can tell the difference by the G. The Helvetica G has a descender and the Artial G does not.
Margins to outside border
Left 23mm
Right 10mm
Top - 10mm
Bottom 12mm
Outer border line thickness - 0.67mm
Inside border line thickness - 0.12mm
Outside border - 183.3 x 257mm
Inside border - 181.3 x 255.4mm
Outside border to country baseline - 11mm
Country heading Helvetica - 12pt
Description line distance from country heading - 7.5mm
Description, year font - Helvetica 9 pt
Description baseline to year base line - 5mm
Note: Inter-character spacing is padded by about 0.4 pt
Distance from year baseline to top of closest vertically stamp box - 5mm
Horizontal Distance between stamp boxes - 4.25 mm
Vertical Distance between stamp boxes - 5mm
Stamp box line thickness: 0.16mm
Stamp box text: Helvetica 6pt
Spacing - stamp boxes usually allow ~2.5mm spacing on sides
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As an experiment, I did something equivalent to what Don did to see how it would look using the border from one of Don's pages on stampsmarter.com. I was more interested in font changes than the border.
This was done in LibreOffice Draw. The border graphic had to be resized a little and not perfect.
hfbaker's way gets you the larger physical page, The Scott page only has about 1/2 inch more horizontal space inside the border.
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Need help in locating country listing on Steiner CD. Looking for Macedonia under German Occupation 1944. My Scott has the listing in Macedonia N1-N8. I have looked under Bulgaria, Yugoslavia and Macedonia on the CD, but cannot find the page to print.
If there is such a page, would appreciate someone pointing me in the right direction.
Mel
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I asked Bill and he said: They’re on the last page of the macedonia1999.pdf file.
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Thanks for the response. I must have an older version of the CD (cannot remember when obtained), but what I am looking for is not on my CD at the location mentioned. It is there in my Scott Cat., but not on my CD.
Meanwhile, I have made up a page for my album.
Again thank you for your help.
Mel
PS: Tell Bill I love his CD and use it quite often. Thank him for all his hard work.
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This is screenshot...
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My CD for Macedonia 1999 pdf file indicates that it was last modified 11/25/2003, and only contains 49 pages. I am sure there is a newer version out that includes what I am looking for, but for now I will just use my made up page. Used the Bulgarian pages containing the stamps that were overprinted in 1944 and used those images for the one page I needed.
Again thanks, I appreciate your help.
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This is what is what is on Stampworld. As we discussed, Steiner does not have any spaces for horizontal stamps.
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Hi Everyone,
A while back we were talking about different types of album pages. Up until the time of that discussion I had been using a wonderful program called AlbumEasy to make my own album pages. The look of the custom pages was great, but it was a lot of work and often hard to do because you don't know the size of some of the stamps until you have an example of one. This discussion happened about the time that I decided to start getting my New Zealand hoarding into some order so that I could call it a collection. So I decided to try something different for me and give Bill Steiner's pages a go. Well I just want to let you know that I think that they are great. Here are three scann of pages to show you how they look.
Best regards ... Tim.
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re: Bill Steiner's Album Pages
They look great Tim. Does he also have pages available for U.S. specialty stuff?
Dan C.
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re: Bill Steiner's Album Pages
Hi Dan,
Here is a list of the United States pages that Bill has available.
Regards ... Tim.
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Dogs are my favorite people. I hang with this one as often as I can.
22 Jan 2013
11:59:28pm
re: Bill Steiner's Album Pages
Beautiful. I like seeing others' stamps.
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re: Bill Steiner's Album Pages
Hi All
I too use Bill's pages .When he started to produce them they were free and you were encouraged to pass on the files as can be seen from this rider to all the countries.
Mine are for Papua New Guinea and My GB and India used in the Middle East and Africa.
He also did blank pages,allowing you to do your (own thing)
I have all these files on disk.
Brian
(Modified by Moderator on 2015-09-28 17:31:27)
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02:49:19am
re: Bill Steiner's Album Pages
Bill revised the copyright notice a couple of years ago. He deleted "friends" from the notice. It also is now online and not included as the first page to his files. Here is the first sentence:
Copyright Notice. Your purchase of a website membership, or a CD-ROM disc, entitles you to use the stamp album page files for the personal use of you or your immediate family.
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re: Bill Steiner's Album Pages
I forget whether it was Mike or Randy who turned me on to Bill's work when I asked about foreign stamp albums. His stuff paired up with a digital copy of Scott 2009 has served me well for all of that stuff.
---Pat
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re: Bill Steiner's Album Pages
I have been using Bill's pages for several years and have always been very happy with the results. You have the choice to print just the pages that you want in your album and leave out the ones that may not interest you, such as the full page souvenir sheets that have a high CV and you will probably never own one anyway.
Mike
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re: Bill Steiner's Album Pages
Thanks Guys,
They really all look so good. So if I have this right Tim, I would need to buy a CD-ROM of the areas of interest to me, and then print them out as I see fit? This would be in lieu of purchasing actual pages already printed out? Or does that last option not even exist?
Remember I go back to the H.E.Harris days of buying supplements to current albums, so much of this technology is new to me.(Also remember that I am so far behind the times that our esteemed Secretary Perry fired me, and trained a chimpanzee to do what I could not)
Just saying!
All the best,
Dan C.
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re: Bill Steiner's Album Pages
Way back in 2005 or 2006 I bought online rights to Bill Steiner's pages for a year or so - I downloaded not the PDF files but the Adobe Pagemaker files and redesigned my own album pages. But then I swapped my PM6 with InDesign3 (paid a good amount of money for a single user whereas my PM6 was a 5 user licence)after printing out a few redesigned pages I started dreaming of a more grandiose album pages with the varieties listed to suit my way of collecting (coil singles instead of pairs, special issues listed on a separate page, etc) so instead of redesigning each and every aspect from Bill's Pagemaker files I started building my own pages in Adobe Indesign 3 with some wonderful results.
I still have those PM files for US, Australia, Canada, India, France, Switzerland, Germany and Great Britain - but these are incompatible with Indesign 3 and requires an expensive addon to transfer. If anyone is inclined towards redesigning for their own personalized album pages please check out his website for this type of membership - you must have the Adobe Pagemaker software for this.
But his pages are an excellent way to display one's collection in a simple way at a very low cost. There are many page designers helping design the pages for his website so if you can design you can probably get discounted or free membership even
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re: Bill Steiner's Album Pages
"Secretary Perry fired me, and trained a chimpanzee to do what I could not"
Isn't that putting someone overqualified to do your work.
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re: Bill Steiner's Album Pages
Dear Saleem,
Exactly what Perry thought, but he had no choice
Dan C.
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A Service Dog gives a person with a disability independence. Never approach, distract or pet a working dog, especially when (s)he is in harness. Never be afraid to ask questions to the handler (parent).
23 Jan 2013
10:38:30am
re: Bill Steiner's Album Pages
Dan -
You crack me up! Lol
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re: Bill Steiner's Album Pages
I did not fire Dan, I pointed out that the US Senate was an area of his expertise. However, Dan can make a decision on his own, therefore, he'd have to run as an Independent.
I still personally prefer to make my own pages, regardless of how nice Bill's pages look. Since I collect multiple types of memorabilia besides individual stamps I want them together because I collect by date.
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re: Bill Steiner's Album Pages
Dan,
You buy the CD and it has EVERYTHING on it. The CD contains hundreds of PDF files sorted by countries, years, and specialties. You then view the PDF that you need, and can print off the individual page.
I like this method because it keeps my foreign albums free of what would normally be thousands of blank pages.
---Pat
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re: Bill Steiner's Album Pages
If it wasn't for Bill's pages I probably would not be collecting stamps. I had a single-country collection with a Scott album when I "stopped" collecting in the mid-1980's. Although many (and perhaps now a majority of collectors) would disagree, I always felt a "true" stamp collection belonged in an album (as opposed to stock sheets...which I will admit have many advantages over albums). I found the Scott albums with the annual supplements too cost-prohibitive to expand beyond a single country (even though I "secretly" wanted to collect world-wide). When I "discovered" Bill's pages a few years ago they re-kindled my desire to expand beyond the single country. I now have modest collections of six countries, and have planned an expansion into two additional countries in the near future. I find that I enjoy the process of printing out the pages as I acquire the stamps, too. I don't have the Pagemaker program which permits modifying the pages, but I do like the fact that Bill also provides several styles of blank pages which you can use to add specialty items, covers, etc. to personalize your collections.
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01:25:57pm
re: Bill Steiner's Album Pages
Pre-printed pages are available if you do not want to print your own pages.
http://www.stampalbums.com/printed_pages.htm
I download the PDF files from Bill's website for just the countries and or years that I need and print them myself.
Have been a member for many years and overall I'm quite satisfied with his album pages.
Liz Jones
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It is during our darkest moments that we must focus to see the light. - Aristotle Onassis
23 Jan 2013
07:47:54pm
re: Bill Steiner's Album Pages
Tim and Brian,
Beautiful album pages and stamps! I think I'll check out Bill Steiner's pages for myself. Thank you for sharing!
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re: Bill Steiner's Album Pages
I also have been using Bill Steiner's pages for several years since I got back into my stamps. I too downloaded the Pagemaker files and now have Adobe Indesign CS4 which will read them. I usually use the pages as they come but sometimes I want to re-arrange a page to add or leave something out so the Indesign program is good for that. For newer stamps that I didn't get the pdf files for I can use the existing pages to make new ones. I have even printed a pdf page where I didn't have a Pagemaker template, scanned it into a graphics program and changed it there to add or delete text descriptions or stamps on the page. His files are cheap for what you get.
Brian
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re: Bill Steiner's Album Pages
If anyone would like to have FREE pages for all USA, try this site;
http://www.philosateleia.com/
You can get pre-printed pages or just make your own how you want them.
It isn't fancy, but they are decent looking.
Randy
(Modified by Moderator on 2017-08-14 20:25:54)
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re: Bill Steiner's Album Pages
bought the cd when they were 25 bucks (US mint postage). It was great. kept in the computer ready at all times. made 15 albums. unfortunately all was lost in the fire.Will get another as soon i can a darn printer that works.
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re: Bill Steiner's Album Pages
You can add me to the list of "Steiner-lovers." (that sounds bad, but it's strictly platonic.) I was lucky enough to buy one of Bill's CDs when it included the Pagemaker files, so I'm able to modify the pages. (I have Pagemaker AND InDesign CS3)
For me, redesigning the pages is the key. I move all the stamp info down below each stamp, so you can still see it when you hinge a stamp in the album. And I add the SCOTT NUMBER, apparently a big copyright no-no, along with color info and whatever else I can find about a particular issue.
It's probably the biggest single thing that got me back into collecting... being able to design my own album pages. I'm grateful to Bill for making this stuff available.
Best
BG
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02:37:30am
re: Bill Steiner's Album Pages
FYI, Bill isn't making the pages any more. He gets the layouts from Palo Albums, which he has an agreement with, and converts them to his page format. His pages still are great, and a big money saver.
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re: Bill Steiner's Album Pages
I thought it was the other way around. Steiner licenses his pages to Palo. I collect 1840-1940 WW, and the 6,500 Steiner pages for the classical era is then used by Palo for their classical era pages.
Is it different for the modern update pages? Steiner is not designing them anymore? Has he retired?
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03:43:03am
re: Bill Steiner's Album Pages
I talked about the album pages with Palo. I was told that Steiner uses their page formats for his album pages now. At the beginning, Steiner and a few others created pages. However, Palo never used Steiner's pages.
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re: Bill Steiner's Album Pages
The 6,500 pages I have for the classical era are from Bill Steiner.
The Palo pages format is exactly the same for these pages.
Coincidence?
Check out any page between Steiner and Palo for any era.
I haven't found any that are not the same design format.
What came first, the chicken or the egg?
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re: Bill Steiner's Album Pages
Alaouites- Palo
Alaouites- Steiner
Random example from my Steiner pages compared to a Palo page.
If Palo said they never use Steiner pages, they are being disingenuous at best.
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11:02:06am
re: Bill Steiner's Album Pages
I'm just the messenger here. I checked on the original comment that Palo was using Steiner pages, and that is what I was told by Palo.
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re: Bill Steiner's Album Pages
No problem, Michael, it is Palo that is being less than forthcoming.
It is clearly in Palo's interest to minimize the fact that many (all?) of Palo's offerings are Steiner format pages all gussied up.
(Not that Palo's pages may be worth it for many collectors, with the pages - In color for Deluxe version - on nice paper on larger pages. )
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re: Bill Steiner's Album Pages
I ONLY use the Bill Steiner album pages, so he much be doing something right!
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re: Bill Steiner's Album Pages
I also have the Steiner CD and my son uses them. And yes, Steiner makes the pages and Palo provides added value.
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re: Bill Steiner's Album Pages
I have used the Steiner album pages since 1998, and I have a set of files from 2000.
These files have been excellent and I have used them to make a world collection up to 1960. I am very thankfull to Bill Steiner for his great work.
Normally I use Steiners original p65-files, which I edit in PageMaker. (Bold country name, descriptions in italic, more space between series if the pages allow it, .....)
After some years without stamp collection, I now want to make an album for Norway to 2014. But I see that Steiner does not distribute the p65 files any more.
If anyone here has some editable files of Norway after 2000 (norway20xx.p65), I would be very happy to receive a copy.
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re: Bill Steiner's Album Pages
I'm also using Bill Steiner's pages. When I decided to get back into stamps seriously, I was faced with the the decision to buy albums and binders, or to make my own pages. The cost of buying albums was prohibitive, and I have no design/layout skills. I also wanted to spend my time working on my stamps, not learning how best to design a page or learning design software like InDesign or any of the dedicated album page design programs.
As somebody said earlier, if not for Bill Steiner's pages, I might have decided not to proceed. But, for a $30/year membership in his website, I get access to ALL his album pages. I can download only the files for the country/date ranges I need and then print out from each file only the pages I need. The albums I'm building don't have any depressing blank pages. I've been very pleased.
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re: Bill Steiner's Album Pages
I use a combination of White Ace pages and pages I print myself. For index pages, cover pages, etc, I use 67 lb acid-free card stock. The 67 lb card stock is the same thickness as the White Ace pages and only 6c per page (as opposed to 65c per page for White Ace blanks). I use a 3/8" EK Success corner cutter (available from just about any craft store) to round the corners of the pages and match the White Ace pages.
I also add a hole-reinforcer to the back-side of EVERY album page.
If I were using Steiner pages then I would be tempted to use card stock, round the corners, and reinforce the holes. But maybe that's just me. I know how much I disliked the flimsiness of the pages on my old Minkus All American album.
I'm not sure this came across the right way. I'm certainly NOT trying to suggest HOW you should make your pages. I'm merely trying to relate what I've learned in hopes it may be useful to someone. Having said that, I must agree that being able to create your own pages is VERY empowering!!!
Lars
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re: Bill Steiner's Album Pages
Lars,
The 67 lb card stock would be about 9 mils thick. Is this correct? I just wanted to clarify. Thanks. (see chart below)
I would guess that anything above this would just be too thick/heavy for a stamp album? Would you agree?
One quick question: Do you know what the paper for the H.E. Harris albums ("Independence") are? I have 2 I bought at Hobby Lobby and I have a feeling that they don't meet the 67 lb paper threshold. I wonder too is that paper is acid free?
Adam
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re: Bill Steiner's Album Pages
"The 67 lb card stock would be about 9 mils thick. Is this correct? I just wanted to clarify. Thanks. (see chart below)"
I don't see a thickness listed on the package I use. It is Wausau Paper Exact Vellum Bristol 67 lb (147 g/m2) cardstock with 94 brightness.
"I would guess that anything above this would just be too thick/heavy for a stamp album? Would you agree?"
Not too heavy, just sub-optimal. You could print your pages on 110 lb stock and have a very sturdy album. The problem is that you will need an expensive printer to print very many pages or you will burn through cheap printers rather quickly. I find 65-67 lb paper to be the idea balance between durability and printability. However, if you were so inclined, you could create pages on 20-24 lb paper (common printer paper).
It's up to you to decide what works best for you. I can only tell you my experience and what I decided for my collection.
Lars
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10:13:10pm
re: Bill Steiner's Album Pages
I wouldn't recommend 20 lb. paper for album pages. Too thin. Many commercial album pages, like Scott International and Minkus are on 24 lb. paper. I use that type of paper when printing album pages, and even print front and back. No problems.
For the heavier paper as suggested by Lars, those are very nice if you are making special presentation pages. single/multiple small country albums, or a specialty album.
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Two Three points:
1. A large collection housed on 67 lb. card stock will take up a lot of space! Unless you plan on handling your pages a lot, a lighter-weight paper — 24 lb. — will do fine.
2. Heavy-weight paper can be very hard on printers. I destroyed the print drum on a laser printer by printing pages on 67 lb. card stock. In addition, that particular printer caused the paper to curl strongly towards the printed side. I had a heck of a time mounting an exhibit, because the pages would fall forward before I could lower the cover of the frame.
3. Hole punching album pages so they fit into a ring book is not a great idea. Even if you never look at them, which of course will not be the case, the holes will distort and eventually tear. Using sheet protectors is better. (I do wish to return to the "good old days". My dad used to own an office supply store and sold blank ring book paper which had holes reinforced by thin metal reinforcements.
Confession: I rarely print album pages these days. I keep nearly all of my stamps and covers in stock books and Vario-type stock pages, and only print exhibit sheets. For exhibits, I use light-weight paper for the most part, not because it's light weight but because of the colour or occasionally because of an imprinted design. (When an "experienced" exhibitor told me I had to use pure white or ivory sheets, I said (to myself), "That's BS" I'll use paper that looks good, not paper that will please judges!" There's this about "dirty old covers": they can look godawful against a pure white background!
Bob
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Bob,
Thanks for your comments. I kind of was thinking that 67 lb card stock was kind of overkill. I use sheet protectors myself with a 8.5" x 11" write-up on each stamp. I slide the stamp all the way to the bottom of the sheet protector. One stamp per page. It's ridiculous I know. One advantage is I am able to insert new issues by just inserting a new page. I don't have to shuffle all the stamps around when I fill in gaps in my collection. Plus if I have duplicates I can put them on the back side of the write-up (still inside the sheet protector). A major disadvantage is that I have too many binders, LOL. Maybe I'll switch to vario or hagner sheets with a mini write up on each stamp. I can see the advantages of it.
Adam
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"A large collection housed on 67 lb. card stock will take up a lot of space!"
Indeed it does!
The bottom shelf is just US, and it has grown by 3 albums since that photo. 67 lb card stock is the closest thing I could find to what White Ace uses for their pages and I wanted to maintain consistency.
"Heavy-weight paper can be very hard on printers."
You got that right! I NEVER print on anything that isn't direct feed.
"that particular printer caused the paper to curl"
Yup, gotta print on a direct feed ink jet - NOT a laser!
"Hole punching album pages so they fit into a ring book is not a great idea."
Works fine for me. 67 lb card stock won't tear very easily, and I add hole re-enforcers to the back of EVERY page.
I started with a Minkus album and didn't like the thin paper and the inability to lay the pages flat for viewing. I like the 67 lb White Ace pages, but you're right that the number of binders needed is excessive. You can only get 50-60 pages comfortably into a White Ace binder and slipcase. It takes 12 binders for US Commemoratives. The first binder covers over 50 years of Commemorative issues. The last binder covers only two years because I include imperfs. That's the real problem - the number of commemoratives issued per year since 1980.
Lars
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19 Jan 2015
04:01:43am
re: Bill Steiner's Album Pages
Question:
I've decided to work on my Canada collection and chose Bill Steiner's pages. I've never used pre- printed album pages - I've always used my own or stock books.
So here's my question: I have both mint and used Canadian stamps. What is the best method of arranging the pages? They will be printed double sided as I've found that works fantastically on my own created pages.
But how do I arrange them? Chances are high I'll never obtain mint stamps prior to 1900. At the same time I do have both mint and used for issues from the Admirals onward - albeit mix and match.
So my dilemma is to how to set up the pages. My DDR is designed all in MNH and then separately housed are the used ones.
What about duplicates that are actually varieties of shades?
I'm thinking to simply use the blank pages for my FDCs and blocks.
All advice is welcomed. I think I'll be able to move through my Canadian material easier with the pre-designed pages.
I also downloaded the Russia pages but again I have varieties that are not listed in Scott.
Kelly
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12:06:51pm
re: Bill Steiner's Album Pages
The Steiner pages do provide spaces for many many varieties, and some items not listed in Scott. I cannot attest to whether the Canada and Russia pages include those.
Steiner includes blank pages that you can add a few lines of text to, so you can create a blank page for Canada, for example, and put a year and a one line description of the stamps to be placed on the page if the varieties do not already have a pre-printed page.
One idea on your collecting unused/mint and used stamps for Canada since you want to print two-sided, you could print the pages so that the pages where you'll place the used stamps is on the back side, and the unused/mint would be on the front. However, the same page would not be printed front and back on the same page.
You could do it like this:
First piece of paper: side 1 = title page; side 2 = page 1 for used stamps
Second piece of paper: side 1 = page 1 for unused/mint stamps; side 2 = page 2 for used stamps
Third piece of paper: side 1 = page 2 for unused/mint stamps; side 2 = page 3 for used stamps
etc.
That way when you open the album, the unused/mint stamps will always be on the right hand side, and the same stamps, but in used condition, will always be on the left.
Magazines are printed so that the desired page to be read is always on the right. You will find magazine advertising is cheaper if printed on the left hand page, because it is not seen first when the pages are turned.
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19 Jan 2015
01:35:47pm
re: Bill Steiner's Album Pages
Thanks Michael - great idea!
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The only problem with double-sided printing of album pages is that stamps mounted on the back of one page will almost certainly impinge on stamps mounted on the front of the next page. I had this happen, but glassine interleaves solved the problem.
Bob
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19 Jan 2015
04:40:54pm
re: Bill Steiner's Album Pages
Bob - you are right. I place mine into sheet protectors. I find this helpful for many reasons - 1) if hinging, a loose stamp will not get lost, 2) stamps will not be damaged either with mounts or hinges on facing pages, 3) prevents "over-stuffing" of albums. Just the extra air in the sheet protector helps remind you not to over-stuff the album.
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The problem with sheet protectors in this situation is that they're thicker than glassine sheets. Each sheet protected with sheet protectors will be approximately 20% thicker and heavier than they would be with glassiness to separate them from the next sheet. Also, I think that sheet protectors might not allow sufficient circulation of air, but now I'm just guessing.
Bob
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Just posted this to another thread, but it might be relevant to the discussion here since this is the paper I am now printing all my Steiner pages on…
Finally got my 'Goldilocks' paper that I'm very happy with
It is noticeably thicker than my previous 60lb text, but more flexible than the Staples 67lb cover stock. Here’s what I finally settled on…got it from Amazon for $23 plus free shipping, which I thought is a great price. I think I was paying about the same for only 125 sheets of the cover stock from Staples.
“EarthChoice Colors - Opaque Text, Cream, Vellum, 8.5" x 11", 70 lb. Text - 500 sheets (Domtar, 81077)â€
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I also use sheet protectors, they do have a very good advantage; you can turn the pages very fast without be worry for the stamps, if you want to make a quick search in an album it’s very useful. I print my pages on 1 side and I place 2 of them in each protector. I do it since 15 years and I have not seen any problem yet, but my stamps are in temperature and humidity controlled room. I place the sheet in Scott Int binders or the UA ( Unitrade one, they are very cheap here in Canada , less than $ 20 and it’s 3.5â€, cost less than binders)
I have all the pages up to 95 on their PageMaker format; I also have PDF2ID to open the PDF in Adobe InDesign. I need it as I have not let a single Steiner page original, all of them I re center the border and realign the stamps in the center , I need to do so as the page I place back to back in the protector. I also remove the expensive stamps that have no places. I also convert the se tenant, bloc of 4 and souvenir to single place holder, if I have a bloc or sheet, I just make a new page for it.
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"“EarthChoice Colors - Opaque Text, Cream, Vellum, 8.5" x 11", 70 lb. Text - 500 sheets (Domtar, 81077"
Chris- that is exactly the paper I use for my Steiner pages.
It is, as you say, just right.
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Hi All,
I've been playing around with modifying Steiner pages. I had always wanted some kind of title page for each country, but when you realize just how many counties there actually are in the WW album, that would be A LOT of extra pages if they were made as separate title pages. So, I tried to do something like this...going for the classic old time Scott album look (without having to pay for them
Wanted to get people's thoughts.
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Looks good but can I be a pain and point out that boarders in the first line should be borders (no "a").
I tend to do a separate page for my country detail, but a short notation at the head of the page works well.
At the end of the day it is what pleases you, and the layout can be plain or fancy depending on the need.
Vic
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re: Bill Steiner's Album Pages
Very good! thanks for the spelling correction. I collect WW (1840-1940), so if I were to do a separate country title page, that would add roughly 350 extra pages which is the reason I'm trying to combine it on the first page of the country.
While I'm at it, I'm trying to cut out any very high value stamps, which I'm not likely to acquire anyway, and group stamps together where I can so not to have 1-2 stamps on a page. This will save me at least 1-2 pages per country too, which will add up in the long run.
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06:51:03pm
re: Bill Steiner's Album Pages
Depending how you would break out the countries and other stamp issuing entities, there actually are over 400. My inventory list has 411 entities, and I combine many that others would not. If you also split out those entities that I combine and also the mini-states like in Germany and Italy, I believe your total jumps up to well over 500. You'd be using a couple of binders just for the title pages. It would look nice, though.
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"You'd be using a couple of binders just for the title pages"
Exactly! What I'm trying to avoid
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Just found an alternative to Steiner pages. I bought a few boxes a stuff at a local auction this week and got a box of old stamp magazines and found this.
Stamp Space Stencils. The price is excellent, only $1. This is from 1958.
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I would love to see SOR offering its membership (subject to some arrangement with Bill Steiner) a catalog of modified or should I say IMPROVED STEINER pages. I also modify his standard pages (I do it by cut and paste, when needed, occasionally merging free pages from other sources, and then making a copy or scanning it), but I can see that many here are MUCH BETTER than my approach, and have gone much further, and I would love to have then share with the rest of us.
We could set up a special listing for Modified Steiner pages, here at SOR... referencing the original Steiner system or restricting access to his subscribers, to avoid bypassing his business model. It would be of great value to some of us!
rrr...
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re: Bill Steiner's Album Pages
I'm reading everyone's album page ideas and trying to figure out how I will do mine when I get to it. I do have my Ben Franklin display that won awards in the late 1970s. This was done on 12x12 pages, which was the accepted size at the time. I had an electric typewriter with a film print cartridge so my text was very good on my pages. This exhibit had been tucked away for years, but seeing my wife's scrap books, I realized those are also 12x12 so I bought one and now I have that exhibit in an album I can share with people. Hurrah!
Upon pulling out all my stuff, I think I've got a fairly complete 20th century collection through about 1980. I collected different things, and kept stuff I liked. I'm thinking I want to draw up my own pages on my computer. I want to organize my stuff by Scott catalog number and devote up to a full page for each stamp issue. For instance, on one stamp issue I saw I had collected four mint corner singles (the corners with no inscription), and a first day cover for that stamp. So that would be that page. The next page may be a used block of 8 that I saved because the postmark was done nicely. Get the idea? Each stamp would be represented by what I have on hand. I'm not anticipating buying anything until I see what I have. Get the concept?
I do like the idea of using page protectors, with two pages back to back in each. I have ones I bought for my postcard collection that hold 3-4 cards per page, the same company makes ones that hold an 8.5x11 sheet without perforating that sheet. I'll have to see how that would work.
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re: Bill Steiner's Album Pages
That's exactly what I do Tom, works well for me. I really like being able to slide a single page out to work on it flat on the table instead of curved from being attached to the album. I found a website that someone had photographed his entire album, and those pages can be saved and printed. Other custom pages I just make with a free program that almost duplicates them.
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Bill Steiner got started with his album pages project while he was still here in Indianapolis. I had begun a part-time business doing photo restoration and graphic design work for clients. In the late '80s or early '90s, I had also begun playing around with album page design in my spare time. I don't remember how I learned about Bill's project or the fact he lived just a couple of miles away. Since I was contemplating the design and sale of specialty album pages, I knew I should pay him a visit. We had a long conversation at his home one afternoon and I quickly realized he was way ahead of me and I'd have a difficult time selling the more elaborate pages I envisioned. I had three choices: forget about making any custom pages; make pages only for my own use; or use Bill's page components to redesign more elaborate pages.
I quickly decided to simply design specialty pages for portions of my collection from scratch using Bill's stamp box dimensions where I didn't have the stamps themselves to work from. He graciously gave me copies of his "User Edition" and "Designer Edition" CDs. Page development was a time-consuming process. In addition, work and other pressing matters intervened and I never got very far. I experimented with the Pagemaker 6 software, CorelDraw! 3 (Yes, it was THAT long ago!) and my then current version of MS Publisher. I think there were a few software packages on the market for designing album pages, but I didn't try any of them.
That was ages ago and I not only don't design album pages today, I don't even collect philatelic material any more. Life took a few unexpected turns and I had to make some tough choices.
As I slowly sell my accumulation of stamps and related material, I keep the high quality scanned images I produce in the process. They're a reminder of the good old days. Occasionally, I'll use a scanned image to produce a larger, clean digital image of a favorite stamp, sometimes "framed and matted," and post it on my Google+ page and on Doug's Google+ Stamp Collecting site. If you're interested in seeing what these look like, you can see them here. https://plus.google.com/b/101350885561904363309/101350885561904363309/posts,https://plus.google.com/b/101350885561904363309/101350885561904363309/posts (Edited 6/6/2019 to reflect the demise of Google's Google+ social media project and the loss of members' posts to that project.)
This satisfies my need to do something creative with philately and takes considerably less time than creating album pages. Even back in the beginning, Bill's work was very impressive. He was clearly very devoted to the project and he's done an amazing thing for modern philately.
Tom
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A few years ago I purchased the CD-ROM of WW pages from William Steiner. Worked out good for the area I was collecting.
Lately I have been collecting Great Britain 1840-1951 and wanted to put them in a hingeless album but the cost was just out of my reach. I decided to try and make my own.
First, I printed the pages I would need for the collection, Queen Victoria thru King George VI, only 18 pages. I am using Scott numbers.
second, I purchased a variety of Scott CLEAR mounts.
Third, I purchased a 3-ring binder from Amos, only $12.
I sized the stamp to the mount, then cut the mount at the top so it came apart and carefully placed it on the album page.
Hingeless Album for under $20.
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So Chris,
I am curious. How were you able to "play around" with the Steiner pages? From what I read on his web page, you cannot adjust the pages in any way.
It is this inflexibility that keeps me from taking the plunge.
David
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01:45:28pm
re: Bill Steiner's Album Pages
Here is Steiner's copyright notice taken directly off his web site:
Copyright Notice. Your purchase of a website membership, or a CD-ROM disc, entitles you to use the stamp album page files for the personal use of you or your immediate family. This is the only use you can make of the files or CD-ROM discs. You may not use them in any commercial activity, such as selling pages printed from the files, or reselling the CD-ROM discs. Also, you may not share the files or CD-ROM's with other people, such as a group of friends or members of your stamp club, even if you do this without charge. These same restrictions apply to any CD-ROM discs you buy from any of the Licensed Sources listed on the Printed Pages website page.
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03:40:14pm
re: Bill Steiner's Album Pages
Michael
You obviously cannot sell or give them away.
However there appears to be no restriction in what you can personally do with them for your own use.
So it would seem that "modifying" them is at your own discretion.
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I have a Steiner pages CD from this year, however, when opened with Adobe, conversion to word.doc or word.docx needs a paid subscription to Adobe.
I am unaware if any other programs will open the CD and/or allow copying, maybe someone can let us know.
The tedious way is to print off the page, scan it and then use paint or other such program to amend the page.
Vic
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Hi all,
I've posted on this extensively elsewhere, but what I do is easily convert Steiner PDF page files into Powerpoint files. This allows me to modify them easily however I want (add images, change fonts, delete boxes, move boxes around, etc.) without the need for expensive Adobe software or difficult to use Photoshop.
You might ask how to convert PDF to Powerpoint…well ‘there’s an app for that'
Chris
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re: Bill Steiner's Album Pages
Hi All,
Here's what I'm thinking about doing with my Steiner pages. I making a title page for each country with a map, some kind of historical photo, and a brief description of the country with anything particularly relevant to their stamps.
For the pages themselves, I changed the font type to something a bit more "classic" looking, increased the font size of the country title on each page, and removed the border.
Due to the sparse spacing of the stamps on a page, I can usually combine at least two pages of a country and thus the new title page doesn't add to the net total of pages for a country.
I removed the border mainly because I think it gives the illusion of making the page look bigger than the 8.5x11 size that it is (compared to the page with the border), but it will also have the added benefit of reducing the amount of ink used in the long run (or at least make up the difference of making the title size bigger)
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Good work, Chris! Not unlike what I was experimenting with several years ago.
Are these 8½ x 11? Punched or going into sleeves?
What paper are you using?
Borderless pages probably give you more flexibility for layout, too. And saving ink can be important if you're printing hundreds of pages. Good ink is expensive!
Feel free to share more pages as you develop them!
Tom
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Thanks Tom!
Yes these are 8.5x11 paper. Paper is EarthChoice (Domtar) 70lb opaque text cream. I collect WW classic pre-1940 so I don't use sleeves due to the added bulk. Pages are 3-hole punch and placed in Lighthouse Vario G binders.
Chris
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out of curiosity, what would happen to the collector who wished to sell his collection that was housed on Steiner pages? What is the legality of that collector, subsequent dealer, and subsequent buyer selling and buying said collection(s)?
David
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04:15:40pm
re: Bill Steiner's Album Pages
I would say that you are not selling the pages, you are selling the stamps. That's provided that the amount agreed upon for the sale was based on the market value of the stamps. If it was based on both the market values of the stamps and pages, maybe there'd be a problem.
I personally have never bought an album collection where I paid extra for the albums. Some of those contained Steiner pages. Usually the pages just get tossed away after the stamps are removed.
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David....
I don't read any prohibition in the copyright notice. The restriction is only against commercial selling of pages from the files. But you are selling a collection, right? You do not charge for the pages
There is obviously no commercial activity or sharing regarding the files themselves.
You have complied with the copyright since the files were for your own personal use while pursuing your stamp collecting hobby. I mean, you are not really in the business of filling Steiner pages to sell stamp collections on the open market, right?
I could be mistaken, and there may be someone with a law degree that could argue otherwise.
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Should be no different than selling your collection housed in a Scott album, right?
What I do wonder about sometimes, however, is what if you add Scott# to your Steiner pages, which is ok since that is for your personal use. But, then years later want to sell your collection...any copyright issues there?
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06:21:27pm
re: Bill Steiner's Album Pages
"What I do wonder about sometimes, however, is what if you add Scott# to your Steiner pages, which is ok since that is for your personal use. But, then years later want to sell your collection...any copyright issues there?"
Same thing. You entered the catalog numbers for your own personal use with no intention of profiting from the use of those numbers.
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I use the Steiner pages and have been very happy with them. They have allowed me to only print the pages I need and to undertake the burgeoning task of collecting worldwide!
larsdog in a November 2014 post stated he uses a "direct-feed" printer. Can anyone enlighten me as to printer manufacturers and models on the market now that are the best ones for this method of album page printing? My printer, which is not a direct-feed printer, has difficulty with the cardstock I use and the inkjet-printed images aren't as crisp as I would like them to be, i.e. there is a bit of "bleed" in the printed image.
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JBaurch: I use an Epson WF-3540 "all in one" printer. Love it. Nice thing is that it has two paper trays so that I can have regular printer paper in the main tray and paper I use for Steiner pages in the alternate tray.
It is an inkjet, and it prints great. See scans of one of my pages in an earlier post in this thread.
Chris
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Chris,
Thanks for the suggestion. I'll look into it.
Jeremy
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I would probably use Steiner pages for some of my collections if not for that darned border. It creates centering issues at times that would be less noticeable. I like the open look of non bordered pages.
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Got a subscription after reading all this and downloaded my first PDF. Looks good (if not necessarily great) and what a time-saver compared to my DIY project using Powerpoint. My wife claims I wasted over $5,000 in billable hours for my Germany album (8% completed...) because I was too cheap to spring the $40 for the Steiner pages before today.
Dragging and dropping some images from the StampWorld catalog would really enhance this, but not sure it can be done while in PDF format. Any recommendations on a decent PDF to PowerPoint (preferred) or Word (second-best) app?
Thanks, Dave.
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"Any recommendations on a decent PDF to PowerPoint"
Dave,
I found this site. You drag your PDF to the site and click convert. It creates a PDF you can download.
https://smallpdf.com/pdf-to-ppt
I tried it with a two page pdf and it seemed to convert. I was then able to use powerpoint to Insert picture and resize it to fit the outline box. Select the box and photo and align (horiz and vert) then Group them.
Mikey
PS: I hope the link function worked. Never tried it before
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"My wife claims I wasted over $5,000 in billable hours for my Germany album (8% completed...) because I was too cheap to spring the $40 for the Steiner pages before today."
It is very rewarding doing your own pages. But yes, it takes time... lots and lots of time.
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Thanks MikeyToo. The smallpdf website converter worked fantastic on the 2 Steiner files I tried (75 pages and 36 pages). It allows you to do a maximum of 2 per hour for free which is more than you need if the plan is to then spend time customizing. I think it tracks the computer you're using as their is no sign-in required. So with 2 desktops, a laptop, and a tablet I can multi-task beyond my capacity to customize.
Thanks again for the awesome tip!
Cheers, Dave.
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12:15:16am
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It will probably track your IP Address. You can have 200 computers set up in your home, but you will have just one IP Address.
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"It will probably track your IP Address. You can have 200 computers set up in your home, but you will have just one IP Address."
Each installation of windows has a SID (security identifier). If anything is being tracked, this is more likely.
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IMPORTANT UPDATE:
I had only opened a couple PDF files before this, that just had album pages, but on the third one just opened now found a disclaimer page at the very top with this:
"You may NOT modify this file"
And from his Corrections section:
"If you spot an error in my pages, I'd appreciate it if you could send me an email...(and) I'll correct all the "errors"... "
I think that settles the issue. Converting to another format or using a PDF editor to customize for your personal preferences or even to make corrections errors is not allowed.
I would think then that we should all reconsider this issue and I, for one will simply email him with suggestions for enhancements rather than doing so myself.
Cheers, Dave.
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I just became the latest convert to Bill Steiner pages. Was getting a bit grumpy that I keep learning about countries that I HAVE to collect, but discouraged by the cost of albums, or the time involved with creating my own pages (something I just did for British Central Africa, and while the home made pages look good it is quite an investment in man-hours, and I am starting to get long in the tooth.)
The Steiner pages print out just dandy, and 3-hole binders do the job. I still have a few fancy-shmancy albums for Australia, Great Britain, and US, but henceforth, especially for the Dark Continent, it will be Steiner. $40.00 seems more than fair for all the world.
Cheers,
Eric
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I believe the comment about restricting modification (not much can be done about it for personal use - not enforceable and cannot prove loss of revenue, etc so no monetary gain) but is more about people creating derivatives works and then reselling them.
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Eric,
I have Palo albums for areas where I have significant stamp coverage, but use the Steiner pages for everything else in my world-wide collection. The Steiner pages are nice because I only need to print out the pages for which I have stamps. This helps prevent album-size bloat caused by having a lot of pages with no stamps mounted on them just taking up space.
The Palo albums are also nice in that I can order only the set of pages that I need, can get reprints or in the case where a mistake has been made on the original page when prepared, get a new corrected page without any hassle.
Both individuals (companies) are very easy to deal with thus making ordering anything from them a real pleasure.
Richard
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Richard, I agree with you about the Palo company. I have a few Palo and Davo albums and they are spectacular. But, going beyond a few countries enters the realm of spending more on albums than stamps . So from this point on it is WalMart 1.5 inch binders and Steiner pages. And that isn't bad, as others have opined. I just started collecting British Colonial Africa, so those WalMart binders are green -- like the primordial jungle.
E
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I was buying the Staples heavy duty 1.5 inch binders for $8 each, with their private label. Then I saw exact same binder at Walmart under the Avery label for $3! Obvious who was making those private label binders! At least I was buying them with Staples Rewards money earned with the enormous printing bills I get for my clients!
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re: Bill Steiner's Album Pages
Steiner's pages have been extremely valueable im my creation of a worldwide collection.
But I always edit the pages. Here is an example why: An edited page:
compared to the corresponding Steiner page:
The main difference is the Tourist Series. These stamps come from booklets in pairs without perforations along the sides.
So, while the European albums always have double space for these stamps, Steiner has space for only one stamp. And most Norway collectors will look for alternatives to Steiner.
Other Norwegian booklet stamps have pairs with diffeent stamps printed together. We generally prefer to keep these at pairs, but Steiner uses separate frames for each stamp.
I have the original Steiner PageMaker files up to 2000 and edit them with PageMaker7 from 2002 (still possible to download a 30 day trial version from Adobe) The newer files are only available as pdfs, which are not so easy to edit.
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"The newer files are only available as pdfs, which are not so easy to edit."
Ah, the critical point! If indeed Steiner pages were editable, I'd sign on instantly. I like the idea of having defined pages, but with the option to move things around to my liking, or to add pairs, blocks or covers as my collection dictates.
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You CAN edit the pdfs, though it is not as easy as with the PageMaker files.
One method is to convert the pdf to a PowerPoint file, as suggested by ChrisW in this thread. Then it is easy to change text or stamp frames, and to delete or add frames and borders.
Another method is to edit a pdf directly. In this, the free Inkscape seems to be a very powerful program. However, I am only able to open one page at a time for editing.
And there are other pdf editors, but I'll go for the PowerPoint method.
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You can open a PDF directly into LibreOffice Draw (no manual converting). The text is usually preserved but the downside it is character by character. You can remove and add a new text box.
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Yes, Steiner pages can still be easily modified. See some of my posts earlier in this thread.
If you have the expensive Adobe Pro software, you can directly edit the PDFs. But, I use PowerPoint instead. There are Apps out there that will convert your PDF file into a PowerPoint file. At that point, you can easily modify how you want (change font, add/delete stamp boxes, add text, even add historical photos or images overprints, etc). I then "Save As" back into PDF format.
I have also made files with either the Scott International or Scott Specialty borders.
Chris
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Adobe LiveCycle Designer opens multiple PDF files for editing and supports much more. In fact, it support the addition of external data sources as fields in the PDF. In other words, if someone had the desire they could add catalog number support to something like the Steiner pages. (Why Bill doesn’t do this is beyond me since it would make his pages an ‘album publishing killer’ solution.) As we all know there are copyright issues with the various catalog publishers. But if a set of page simply supported an external data sources (like a Excel, CSV, or XML file) users could simply add whatever catalog (or their own) numbers they desired to the PDF. The PDF would ‘merge’ the album pages and the data source file together at time of printing. The PDF pulls the catalog numbers from the other file as it prints. It only took me a few minutes to make this work Adobe LiveCycle Designer and a set of Bill’s pages.
And since ‘self-printed’ pages and albums have become quite popular, paper selection should be considered. Everyone knows to look for ‘acid-free’ but fewer folks know what this really means. There is no industry standard for ‘acid free'; paper manufacturers use the term ‘acid free' simply because they do not add any acids during the production process and/or add some Calcium Carbonate for buffering. How much they add, how ‘acid free' the paper really is can be anyone's guess. Throw a bit in there, and you can sell it as 'acid free' paper.
Paper, like water, has the ability to hold buffer in reserve. As time and environmental conditions evolve, the buffer that is held in reserve can be drawn upon to neutralize the paper. It might be able to neutralize the paper for 10 years, it might be able to neutralize the paper for 1 year. And the ability to neutralize is impacted by the environmental conditions. If there is high humidity and temperature conditions, or if there are large variations and swings in the temperature and humidity, the need to consume the remaining neutralizing buffer reserves is much greater.
You can also find a large amount of paper marketed as ‘acid free' even when it includes recycled wood fiber! Any time you have wood fiber in the paper it means that there is pulp and the resulting Lignin. Lignin is the ‘stuff' (organic substance) that binds cells and fibers in wood. It is the source of the acid. If you have Lignin in the paper, you have the potential to produce acid over time.
This is the fallacy of acid-free paper marketing; how much buffering a paper may contain to neutralize the acidic Lignin organics is undefined. The paper can also still contain a substantial amounts of Lignin. Using the cheapest ‘acid-free' paper you can find and thinking that you are covered for decades is going to cause you heartburn at some point. With paper you pretty much get what you pay for, be prepared to spend some money if you want good quality paper.
If a hobbyist is going to time and expense on printing a large amount of albums pages, they might want to consider true archival paper. Look for paper buffered with at least 2-3% calcium carbonate, has a cotton content of 25% or greater, and it should only contain high alpha cellulose pulp from purified wood fiber (contains no Lignin). Then store albums and stamps in environmentally controlled areas. Heat and moisture accelerate the chemical reactions that cause paper to deteriorate, and high moisture levels can result in mold growth. A cool, dry and stable storage environment is paramount; temperatures should be held at a constant 70°F with a relative humidity held between 30% and 50%.
To learn more you can check out these links
http://www.loc.gov/preservation/care/paper.html
http://www.niso.org/publications/tr/tr01.pdf
Don
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re: Bill Steiner's Album Pages
I sort of edit my Steiner pages in photoshop and remove what I don't need and copy and paste from other pages to get it the way I want (with the help of my grandson)
Here's two pages we did ,As I only collect the Malay Tigers We rearranged the pages to suit.
Brian
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A couple more pages of mine in which I edited Steiner pages using PowerPoint.
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Very nice work on those pages Chris!
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Has anyone replicated a Steiner page in Scribus?
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Yeah, Chris, those are my kind of pages. Love 'em!
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"Has anyone replicated a Steiner page in Scribus?"
AlbumEasy includes a sample album file called SteinerExample that can be used as a template for replicating Steiner pages.
Clive
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I ended up making my own template (same border, spacing from edges). The font show in original is Helvetica but looks like Arial is what is in the PDF.
Image link no longer valid
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09:13:54pm
re: Bill Steiner's Album Pages
There has been renewed interest in discussing the Steiner pages. I thought I would bring this thread back to life as well. It is full of information relating to the pages and how various people use them as is or modified.
I do have a question relating to modifying the pages. Many pages, especially in the back-of-book area have just one or two stamps on a page. If you have four pages like that, then there is plenty of wasted space on the paper and in the album binder.
I have tried this, but haven't been able to figure it out. Using my example, is there a way that I can take page 1 and edit it by blocking and copying the spaces for the other stamps from pages 2 through 4 onto page 1? Right now what I have been thinking of doing is to simply mount the other stamps in the blank space below the printed spaces.
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I haven't tried modifying Steiner pages on the computer, but I am not above employing scrapbooking techniques -- as barbaric as that sounds. This particular page is a bit garish, but you get the idea, the image is just for demonstration purposes. The choices of scrapbook papers is inexhaustible and can be applied judiciously with a glue stick. On rare occasions I have done this to cover spaces for stamps I have no interest in collecting, or to cover damage on a page. Not a standard practice for me, but comes in handy.
Love the Steiner pages, best $40 I ever spent. (I think it was $40)
Eric
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The most reliable and faithful method I have used and seen is to convert to a powerpoint and then modify. You then can move or add objects (shapes, text boxes) to customize.
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There are basically three ways to generate a PDF file.
1. Use a PDF publishing application which specifically outputs a PDF
2. Use some other application which can ‘Save As’ a PDF
3. Use some other application which can ‘Print As’ a PDF
PDF which are made using either #2 or #3 are a bit of kludge. Think of them in the same way as if you printed a hard copy, then put it on your scanner and saved it as an image file. When you open a PDF file which has been generated this way the opening application tries to ‘deconstruct’ the image into various pieces and parts. It typically can figure out which elements are ‘text’ and which elements are graphical.
But if the original PDF is generated using #1 above, then it opens a wealth of features and capabilities.
For example, say you draw and define a standard sized box outline for a commemorative stamp. Being a commemorative, this box is used on 753 different pages in your PDF file. But you would now like to slightly change the dimensions of the box increasing its height by 1mm. In a PDF publishing application you would simply make the change to the template and every page is automatically updated. Same for a page border, update the master page every page gets the change. Say you want to add page numbering to every page; takes seconds to add this to a master page so it displays on all 753 pages.
There are even more powerful feature that can be used with a PDF publishing application like ‘data connections’. Steiner obviously does not want to license catalog numbers. But he could have developed his pages ‘data connected’ with another file like a spreadsheet. A hobbyist could then add/modify the spreadsheet with whatever catalog numbers they wished. When the PDF file opens, it connects with the spreadsheet and automatically inserts the catalog numbers under each stamp. This allows for any catalog numbers the hobbyist uses to be assigned and removes any licensing requirement from the PDF publisher.
Editing PDFs has a lot to do with how the original PDF was generated or if you try to bring it into some third party app like Power Point, the app simply tries to convert the elements it can figure out. Simple tasks like ‘copying and pasting’ a few boxes or making a few changes to a page then this is easy and an app like Power Point will do the trick.
But if anyone is going to trying to modify hundreds of PDF pages I recommend spending a few dollars and buying a real PDF publishing application like Adobe Live Designer. If you think you are going to spend more than 25 man hours doing editing/modifying PDF files than the return on investment is justified.
Don
Some screen shots of a Steiner page being edited...
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02:14:00pm
re: Bill Steiner's Album Pages
Thanks for the tips and advice. Right now I pretty much do it the way Winedrinker does, except I place stamps in the blank space to cut back on the number of pages.
I have tried converting the pages to PowerPoint, but it doesn't permit me to block and copy large areas of a page and paste it all on another page. I wouldn't be doing this enough to justify buying an expensive program, but using the program online to convert as Ted said, only lets you convert two files per hour. I need more flexibility than that time restriction.
I have a CD-ROM with license of Adobe Acrobat 8 Standard, but I can't get it to install in Windows 7. I was hoping to use that for this purpose.
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Is it 64-bit Windows 7?
Don
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06:10:26pm
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I believe it's 32.
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Don, do you mean Adobe Livecycle Designer? If so, it looks like part of an enterprise package and something like a plug in to Acrobat. I did not see a price for it.
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Hi Al,
Yes, it is a stand alone application that comes bundled with Acrobat. It is also great for making interactive PDF forms; something that few people do in our hobby. Anytime I see an PDF form which needs to be filled out I am amazed that you often have to download it, print it, and then fill it out by hand. Welcome to 1999.
The beauty of a PDF form is that you can set it up to be filled out on the device, just type in your name in that name field on the form. But the PDF form has to be setup in an application like LiveCycle Designer.
Don
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re: Bill Steiner's Album Pages
"I have tried converting the pages to PowerPoint, but it doesn't permit me to block and copy large areas of a page and paste it all on another page. I wouldn't be doing this enough to justify buying an expensive program, but using the program online to convert as Ted said, only lets you convert two files per hour. I need more flexibility than that time restriction.
"
Michael,
I'm not sure what you are talking about here. once you have it in PowerPoint, there's no reason you shouldn't be able to copy and paste anything on the page. Also, the converter I'm using converts the file in a second or two.
By the way, I have written a tutorial on all this as a guest post on Jim's BigBlue 1840-1940 blog. It is scheduled to come out on September 20th.
Chris
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When I did conversions, you could transfer elements. Text was in text boxes and shapes (like the spaces for stamps) were either individual or grouped. It can vary depending on which online tool you use since some are a lot better than others.
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There appears to be many many different programs and apps for converting PDFs to Powerpoint files. There are many available in the Apple App Store, some free and some cost a few dollars. If yours is taking more than a second or two to convert or not allowing you to select certain items, etc., I would just try some others. You should be able to easily move stamp boxes from one page to another in order to combine pages.
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I had posted this on SCF but shows a test of taking a Steiner page in PDF and then converting it to PPT.
Original conversion (ppt screen shot). The converter I used was very faithful on a complete country I used (Labuan).
After changing page properties to larger paper - if you change properties everything gets scaled (expected per Microsoft)
This is after copying elements from original conversion to larger format. The border was put in the PPT master page so it takes 2 copy / paste actions (1 to copy border, 1 to copy all elements). I did not attempt to spread anything out and would suggest just using your own border but shows extra spec on Scott larger page size.
I am not saying this is a good idea for a large number but it can be done.
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What Chris and Al are saying is key, it is ALL about the conversion.
First, we should understand what the PDF format is and what it's purpose was. The overriding part of the original PDF specification was that was intended to make a document 'look' the same no matter device it was displayed on (hence the PDF name; Portable Document Format).
The reason that the future of PDF looks so grim today is exactly because of this, when PDF was first developed it was for nice, big computer monitors. No one knew at the time that the entire world would soon be using mobile devices to access their information. So right now PDF format is in trouble, it simply does not scale to being displayed on small displays like tablets or smart phones. It is about as far from being 'portable' as you can get. No one currently has a way to make a PDFs display properly on a mobile device so the future of the PDF is very much in question.
If you go to display a PDF on a smaller screen there are two choices; either force the user to endless scroll back and forth or shrink the page so small that the user cannot even read it.
When we generate a PDF it has to make itself 'look' the same on any operating system, viewer, or device. It is supposed to retain the fonts, white space, and all other formatting. But, for example, you cannot count on a certain font being installed on every device. So the typical way to make sure that this happens is to simply convert the entire document into a image. We have all seen PDFs which were nothing but a large image; you cannot search this kind for a certain word because there are no words, it is a picture. If you try to 'select' a sentence it instead draws a box around it, you cannot select a word(s).
But you can later add OCR (optical character recognition) to a PDF so that users can search and select words. OCR recognizes the text and adds this information to the PDF file but retains the original formatting. PDF like this are still images but now have added additional text information.
And of course this is the issue with trying to print PDFs on page sizes different than the original design. If you try increase or decrease the size of a page it will usually scale the graphic elements too (just like any image). This introduces a huge issue if you are trying to maintain the original dimensions of a the boxes around a stamp on an album page.
So now along comes Joe Stamp collector who would like to convert back the PDF to another file format to make it editable. Obviously if the PDF was originally developed in a native PDF application this would not be so hard. But the trouble with the Steiner product is that he did not do this, his pages are images.
Bill did no one any favors by generating these pages as images. It could be that he developed his product the right way but compiled the PDFs to be images (to prevent users from editing them easily) or it could be that he was clueless and did not know how to properly develop PDFs. But what we have now are users trying to reconvert the images back into something editable. This leads to all kinds of wrinkles and unexpected results which are completely dependent upon what you use to convert. No two tools/apps will convert things exactly the same way.
Chris mentioned he was writing an article on how to do this. Unfortunately his article will have to either be huge (include instructions for the 40-50 possible ways that could be used to reconvert from PDF to PowerPoint) or only describe the basics and let users struggle trying to figure out the details.
Don
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re: Bill Steiner's Album Pages
Unfortunately, when I wrote my article, I didn't really fully appreciate all the different converters that were out there and the fact that they all worked slightly differently. So I didn't go into that aspect at all, but only talked about how I did it using the free converter that I got from the Apple App Store a few years ago (which appears to no longer be available).
Chris
P.S. my guess blog post will come out September 20th on Jim's BigBlue blog.
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An the issue that I have seen mentioned frequently in designing your own albums is that of determining the dimensions of stamps. I was one of Bill Steiner's volunteers about 15 years ago and a major part of the task of laying out an album page was measuring the frames from an existing album. If you're designing an album for stamps that you don't currently own, you have the challenge of finding the dimensions of the stamps. In some cases the dimensions are available from websites such as colnet.com. However dimension information tends to be somewhat spotty. In attempting to find a solution to this challenge I developed a method for extracting the frame dimensions of Bill Steiner's PDF files. As an example I have extracted the frame dimensions for the Australia album in the classical era section. Here is the a link to the CSV file which I created. It shows the frame dimensions by page, row and column.
https://sites.google.com/site/hfbaker/home/australia_classic_dimensions.csv
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Very nice job extracting the dimensions for the Australia stamps.
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"An the issue that I have seen mentioned frequently in designing your own albums is that of determining the dimensions of stamps.
...
As an example I have extracted the frame dimensions for the Australia album in the classical era section. Here is the a link to the CSV file which I created. It shows the frame dimensions by page, row and column."
hfbaker,
Great job extracting the dimensions, as you rightly state determining dimensions is probably the hardest part of laying out an album.
In the case of Australia however, you can download a complete Australian album from 1913 to 2006 as a text file including dimensions ready for processing with AlbumEasy or as a final PDF here http://www.thestampweb.com/albums.html
Clive
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Clive,
Unfortunate that I picked a country that had already been done. Should have checked your website first. I am a big fan of AlbumEasy. I am starting to get reinvolved in Album design and AlbumEasy is definitely my tool of choice.
If anyone is starting a new album project and you need frame dimensions, let me know and I will extract the dimensions from the relevant Stamp Album Web PDF file.
Harry
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02:22:06am
re: Bill Steiner's Album Pages
Hi, I'm new to this forum. I ve used Bill Steiner's pages during the years and I find them very useful. these days though he has been having a problem(?) with his website and all the info in the downloads section seems gone. this is the message you see when you try go in the download section:
Database Results Wizard Error
The operation failed. If this continues, please contact your server administrator.
Bill doesn't answer emails.
Did anybody here have the same issue and since how long?
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Luca
There is already an existing thread on the Steiner Access Issues
Regards
Richmond
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03:23:41am
re: Bill Steiner's Album Pages
ok Thanks, i realized Bill answered me to an another old email address of mine . he said probably the issue will be fixed in a few days, thanks
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I am probably one of Bill Steiner's biggest fans. I'm also my own worst enemy in that I take out a subscription with Bill, download the pages that I think I need at the time and then before I realize a year has gone round and my membership has run out. I think I have done that four or five times now. So I bought the CD of all the pages. I am interested mostly in the earlier stamps so hopefully the CD will do me for a while.
Tim
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I have the CD as well but for $50/per annum will renew my subscription every year as a thank you or the excellent service that has been /is being provided.
Also can I recommend that all things Steiner are given their own Topic within Stamporama.
Regards
Richmond
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I had subscription a while back and downloaded everything including his Page Maker files. I decided to renew and get a fresh set although his PM files are no longer available. My concern that if something happens to down the road these may disappear.
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"I am probably one of Bill Steiner's biggest fans. I'm also my own worst enemy in that I take out a subscription with Bill, download the pages that I think I need at the time and then before I realize a year has gone round and my membership has run out. "
I did the same thing, but now there are some areas that I need that I didn't originally download. I need to just buy the CD so I will always have it on hand.
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My Steiner cd was purchased in 2013 or 14. (GB goes to 2013 inclusive)so it's about time to pay again.
Does anyone with a more recent version know if he has set pages up for the individual stamps where currently he only has a space for the sheet or block of stamps, example below.
It would be good if he had both pages but maybe he now has?
Ps mermaid alert for larsdog
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I got my Steiner CD last November and the page has not changed.
The Flowers is a booklet pane and not individual stamps.
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Thanks Angore, fine if you are collecting them mint but used booklet panes are few and far between and would be mostly contrived.
Guess I'll just have to use the blank pages and appropriate headings or Albumeasy.
Thank you for the input.
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Yes, most modern albums expect you to collect mint so spaces for whole booklets or strips are typical. The Mystic US album mixes often breaks them up. The problem is with self-adhesives in general. They sometimes do not work with either together or apart when in Mint condition (still on backing).
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I was curious, what color paper do you all prefer for your Steiner pages? White, cream or ivory? I noticed Sam’s Club has white and ivory colored packs of cardstock for a good price. But I wasn’t sure if ivory is too yellowish.
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I use cream pages - Domtar Earthchoice 28/70. The way my page count is growing if I used any thicker stock I would need a lot more binders.
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09:14:05am
re: Bill Steiner's Album Pages
What year is your CD? Mine is from 2017, and Indonesia goes all the way to 2014. If you are doing a search, make sure to remove the underscore after "Indonesia" in your parameters.
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I had looked at Steiner's web site and Indonesia and Malaysia was fairly complete in 2003.
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I have used Steiner pages for quite a few years. I was able to buy Pagemaker 6 or 7 and then upgraded somewhere along the way to Adobe InDesign CS4 (CS4 is now well past eligibility for upgrade at reduced price but I'll never need anything more). I likely use a very small part of InDesign to make my pages but with the little I know of it I can edit all the pagemaker files, re-arranging, adding labels, catalog numbers, dropping souvenir sheets from most pages since I rarely come across them. Se-tenant blocks can be handled with labelling and adding sub-dividing lines in the boxes for the individual stamps.
I handle the more recent pages where I don't have only pdf files by first breaking the file down to 1 page per file using a free PDF-XChange Editor. Then I can place the individual page pdf on a page in InDesign and I use it as a template for a new page in InDesign CS4. That is often as fast as editing the original pagemaker files.
As has been said before, the Steiner pages are worth it.
Brian
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I'm using Steiner pages for last few years now. I am collect WW so am looking at a lot of countries. I like that I can pick the ranges I need and skip the rest until I may need it. I started with 3-ring binders but found it pretty difficult. I have a comb binder from an old business and now make single country binders as needed. Working out just fine for me. It allows me to create and add additional pages I want to customize my collection.
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After a bit of adjustment I was able to get the Steiner pages to print on blank Scott Specialty pages. I changed the Arial font to palatino linotype to better match the Scott font. I resized the pdf page to 11.65" x 10.25" to center within the borders. The bottom margins are a bit tight, but most of the Steiner pages are not quite as crowded. I picked this one because I knew it would test the limits.
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hfbaker,
Are the stamp boxes now larger since you enlarged the PDF?
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This is my diabetic cat OBI! I think, therefore I am - I think! Descartes, sort of!
06 Jul 2019
04:00:59pm
re: Bill Steiner's Album Pages
Is there a record for most views and most posts on a single thread? This must be close! I just added one more!
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"Are the stamp boxes now larger since you enlarged the PDF?"
The software I use to increase page size has the option of maintaining the size of the contents. So the box sizes are the same.
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09:50:55pm
re: Bill Steiner's Album Pages
What printer do you use to print the over-sized pages?
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Your page turned out very nicely. I think you are definitely on to something with your alterations to the default Steiner pages!
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"What printer do you use to print the over-sized pages?"
Canon Pixma Pro 100. I've noticed the price of wide format printers has come down significantly in the past few years.
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10:43:17pm
re: Bill Steiner's Album Pages
Thank you. When I was shopping for a new printer I didn't like how the large format printers printed. Your's I don't remember as being available, or at least i did not test it out. I will keep it in mind for a future purchase.
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02:49:49pm
re: Bill Steiner's Album Pages
Very interesting discussion, with lots of excellent advice.
Is there a way to use the Bill Steiner program to create Art on Postage Stamps pages?
I'd think someone has created pages on that theme.
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03:23:09pm
re: Bill Steiner's Album Pages
Steiner pages include a group of blank pages. Most of the templates let you create headings of different numbers of lines. The title page templates let you add text information. You would need a page editor to do anything else, like create spaces for stamps.
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re: Bill Steiner's Album Pages
"Very interesting discussion, with lots of excellent advice.
Is there a way to use the Bill Steiner program to create Art on Postage Stamps pages?"
It might be easier to create the pages from scratch.
You could use, for example, Microsoft Word, PowerPoint, LibreOffice Draw, etc.
or a dedicated program such the free AlbumEasy - see the link in my signature.
Clive
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re: Bill Steiner's Album Pages
Here is a style guide to Steiner pages. Most measurements were using software to check shapes. Early Steiner PDF's embedded Arial MT for the original Helvetica. You can tell the difference by the G. The Helvetica G has a descender and the Artial G does not.
Margins to outside border
Left 23mm
Right 10mm
Top - 10mm
Bottom 12mm
Outer border line thickness - 0.67mm
Inside border line thickness - 0.12mm
Outside border - 183.3 x 257mm
Inside border - 181.3 x 255.4mm
Outside border to country baseline - 11mm
Country heading Helvetica - 12pt
Description line distance from country heading - 7.5mm
Description, year font - Helvetica 9 pt
Description baseline to year base line - 5mm
Note: Inter-character spacing is padded by about 0.4 pt
Distance from year baseline to top of closest vertically stamp box - 5mm
Horizontal Distance between stamp boxes - 4.25 mm
Vertical Distance between stamp boxes - 5mm
Stamp box line thickness: 0.16mm
Stamp box text: Helvetica 6pt
Spacing - stamp boxes usually allow ~2.5mm spacing on sides
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re: Bill Steiner's Album Pages
As an experiment, I did something equivalent to what Don did to see how it would look using the border from one of Don's pages on stampsmarter.com. I was more interested in font changes than the border.
This was done in LibreOffice Draw. The border graphic had to be resized a little and not perfect.
hfbaker's way gets you the larger physical page, The Scott page only has about 1/2 inch more horizontal space inside the border.
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re: Bill Steiner's Album Pages
Need help in locating country listing on Steiner CD. Looking for Macedonia under German Occupation 1944. My Scott has the listing in Macedonia N1-N8. I have looked under Bulgaria, Yugoslavia and Macedonia on the CD, but cannot find the page to print.
If there is such a page, would appreciate someone pointing me in the right direction.
Mel
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re: Bill Steiner's Album Pages
I asked Bill and he said: They’re on the last page of the macedonia1999.pdf file.
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re: Bill Steiner's Album Pages
Thanks for the response. I must have an older version of the CD (cannot remember when obtained), but what I am looking for is not on my CD at the location mentioned. It is there in my Scott Cat., but not on my CD.
Meanwhile, I have made up a page for my album.
Again thank you for your help.
Mel
PS: Tell Bill I love his CD and use it quite often. Thank him for all his hard work.
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re: Bill Steiner's Album Pages
This is screenshot...
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re: Bill Steiner's Album Pages
My CD for Macedonia 1999 pdf file indicates that it was last modified 11/25/2003, and only contains 49 pages. I am sure there is a newer version out that includes what I am looking for, but for now I will just use my made up page. Used the Bulgarian pages containing the stamps that were overprinted in 1944 and used those images for the one page I needed.
Again thanks, I appreciate your help.
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re: Bill Steiner's Album Pages
This is what is what is on Stampworld. As we discussed, Steiner does not have any spaces for horizontal stamps.
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