Larry,
Janet Klug who is with the philatelic infrastructure somewhere, wrote an article for Linn's on how to set up an album page using your word processing program whether it's, microsoft or corel. As long as your word processor has table and columns you can set up a very fine album page with some notations available. I believe you could find the article if you are a subscriber to Linn's or search the Linn's website on the reference link.
Joel
Uh, you've heard of a computer called an Apple? Probably. You may not have heard of Apple iWork suite, which is not just in competition with Microsoft's Office, but kicks its digital butt right out of the picture. A darned near perfect blend of word processing and graphic design tools.
it took me about 20 minutes to produce this mock-up from scratch (minus the images of the stamps, which I already had, and which you wouldn't use anyway).
Pages -- the entire iWork suite of programs -- is truly wonderful software, and X times easier to use than MS Word, which I loath with all of my soul.
Bob
(Message edited by Bobstamp on March 11, 2009)
Hi Applefanboy Bob ;) Apple make wonderful hard- and software (I really love my iPhone) but it really isn't that hard to make a page like that in Word. As long as you don't use the 2007 version. I got it on the notebook I have to use for work and after more than a year I still find it terribly unpractical to use (and I am in the IT business...) Word 2003 is a lot more userfriendly. But if you really want to make good pages do not use a wordprocessing program, go for DTP. I work with Adobe Indesign a lot, and it is great. Quite a steep learningcurve, I have to admit, but once you figure out on what principles it works, you can do anything with it, from editing your novels to making brochures.
Indesign is an expensive program though. I heard there are good freeware alternatives available. Scribus (www.scribus.net) seems to be pretty good. Available for Windows, Linux and Apple.
Interesting discussion guys, especially from Applefanboy, but I don't think we are answering Larry's question. Larry, while you are looking at stamp album pages, have a look at http://www.stampalbums.com. The album pages offered here are quite good and I believe fairly inexpensive for what you get. I have subscribed to this site.
Regards ... Tim.
that's correct, we were digressing quite a bit.
At the risk of digressing into another discussion: I have never understood the fascination among Northamericans for stampalbums like these and how everyone is busy with hinges etc. It must be because I am Dutch but I have been collecting for almost 30 years now (and I'm not yet 40 years old, so that is almost my whole life ) and only now I have begun to reach the level of completeness in some countries that I would like to think about a real stampalbum. Until now I have been perfectly happy with good quality black page Lighthouse stockbooks. around 13 euros for 32 pages.
There was an article published in the Philatelic Exhibitor- journal of the American Association of Philatelic Exhibitors (AAPE) "Creating An Album Page Template (Microsoft Word) by Ross Marshall. I can send scan of article to anyone interested. Send email address to me via my profile email address. If anybody would like to see a copy of their journal, send mailing address to me.
Hi Tim, I do subscribe to Bill Steiner's very reasonably priced stampalbums.com. However, you can't modify those pages unless you also have Adobe Pagemaker. I'd like to be able to create some pages of my own design for including collateral material in my albums.
Larry
Jan-Simon,
So, when using the Lighthouse stockbooks, how do you catalog what you have so that you know what you have got?
Regards ... Tim.
Hi John,
I'd like to read the article. I'll send you my email address.
regards ... Tim.
Tim,
with the help of Michel catalogues, and when I reach a certain point I start making wantlists. But I must admit that it helps that I have a pretty good memory. Most of the time I know if I still need a stamp or not.
In the stockbooks I need to rearrange the stamps from time to time. No problem with that.
Jan-Simon
I'm with Jan-Simon - a lot of what I have is not yet album-worthy and stock books are the way to go. I have a separate want list that I can take with me to stamp shows, etc. and I keep a 5X7 notepad handy to mark down what stamps are on each page and I put the loose notebook pages between the glassine protectors of each of the stock pages. I can move the stamps around as I need to and I try to leave space for stamps that I'm likely to add.
When I put together my Polish collection - thousands of stamps issued weekly by the communist postal authority - trying to put together an album in Scott or any other catalogue order would have resulted in two or three stamps per page in way too many places. My solution - sorting them by year (1951, 1952, 1953 and so on) and then just adding extra pages as I needed to for the year as I added stamps to my collection. I left space to fill out sets, but otherwise they went in as I got them. Jan-Simon, you should try that with your Bulgarian bonanza that you tried to impose on the rest of us a few months ago! ;-)
Hmm... don't mention the Bulgarians... By the way, anyone interested in a nice packet of fine Bulgarian stamps? ;)
Back to the discussion: I read on another forum of someone who used Adobe Pagemaker to create his own pages. A lot of work, but the finished product looked pretty good.
(Message edited by Jan-Simon on March 12, 2009)
Hi Jan,
This is Saleem, just returned from the agri business after some time (have to catch up a lot)
I do create my own album pages using Adobe Pagemaker and recently Adobe Indesign CS3. If one gets used to these album creation is a lot of fun and much more easier than any other softwares. The Adobe PM is a DTP software meant for such purposes. Sometime back I do put two of my album creations in the SOR auctions - these were US PNC singles and PNC strips of 3 album pages, not much interest here but I did sold a few copies at eBay.
Saleem
My curiosity is aroused about Jan-Simon's Bulgarian collection. Can't find the thread about it. Where do I look?
Thanks,
Merv
Hi Merv,
Check out "Let's Trade/Wanted to Buy" - "Offer Bulgaria" for Jan-Simon's attempt to introduce us to the wonderful world of Bulgarian CTO's.
(I should add, for all the grief I give Jan-Simon about his Bulgarian stamps, I too found myself with two binders of Bulgarian stamps a few years ago when I bought an auction lot (not SOR) that was advertised as an Eastern European mixture. Fortunately my dad was around to take them off my hands...) I only laugh because misery loves company.
Andrejs
I like Bulgarian Air-Mail stamps -- CTO or not.
Dave N.
<><
Dave,
I'm partial to some older airmails. Mainly because of design. The majority are just common,basic,unatractive stamps.
My most recent ones I acquired were the Switzerland C8 and C9.
The Bulgaria airmails, I'm partial to the early issues with overprints- C1-4 , C31-32 , C37-40 .
Nothing special about them,I just like their looks.
TOM
Sorry Jansimon, did not mean to change the subject(albums).
I gave up printed pages years ago.Only use vario(and other brands) stock pages and three ring binders for my albums. I can add,move around,or eliminate a page or two, without haveing to print a new page. And there's no hinges or mounts needed.
So cant really comment on album pages,and have nothing positive to add to the thread.
TOM
Well, After three days and 18 posts (not counting my own) I guess I can safely conclude the answer to my question is, "No."
Just a few "comments on the commments": I'm well-aware that Macs have the reputation of being much better handling graphics than PC's. However, investing in a Mac for my limited purposes wouldn't really be cost-effective.
I can see how using stock pages instead of albums has many advantages as they provide a lot more versatility than do albums. However, I'm reluctant to give up the pleasure of mounting my stamps and the occasional thrill of completion when I find a stamp which fills a space that had proven elusive.
Inasmuch as Albumeasy is a free download, I'll probably give it a try.
Larry,
I have Albumeasy; it's a bit 'evasive'.....in that I mean it gives very little in the way of helpful instructions and once you start using the program you are pretty much on your own as far as figuring out how it works.
At least, that's MY experience with it. It's kind of a scattered program-that's the only way I can think to explain it.
In any case, yes it works. No, it's not great. But for a free program, its worth giving a try, I believe. It does have its limitations, but has its good points as well.
Best thing to do is as you said - give it a try!
And if you do, please tell me what YOU think of it!
I've explored "print your own" album sites, and Bill Steiner's "Stamp Album Web" web site is worth looking into. From his home page, at http://www.stampalbums.com:
WELCOME! This website is devoted to providing affordable U.S. and foreign stamp album pages that you can print out on your own computer. There are over 50,000 U.S. and foreign pages available, and a complete set of over 6,500 Classic Era pages, with more pages being added all the time.
I gave the AlbumEasy product a try this afternoon and I quite like the result. Here are a couple of pictures of what I did.
And just for your edification, here is the code that created this page.
# ------------------------------------------------------------------------------
# First setup the page elements that are common to all pages in this album.
# ------------------------------------------------------------------------------
ALBUM_PAGES_SIZE (215.9 279.4) #Set the page to US Letter (8.5 x 11)
#ALBUM_PAGES_SIZE (210.0 297.0) #Use this for A4
#left, right, top and bottom page margins
ALBUM_PAGES_MARGINS (25.0 12.0 15.0 15.0)
ALBUM_PAGES_BORDER (0.5 0.1 1.0)
ALBUM_PAGES_TITLE (TB 16 "Bailiwick of Guernsey")
ALBUM_PAGES_SPACING (6.0 6.0)
# ------------------------------------------------------------------------------
# Define the first page of this album
# ------------------------------------------------------------------------------
PAGE_START
#PAGE_TEXT (HN 10 "19th Century Prints ")
PAGE_TEXT_CENTRE (HS 12 "19th Century Prints");
PAGE_TEXT_CENTRE (HS 12 "\n1978, Feb 7 Litho. Perf.14x13.5")
ROW_START_FS (HN 6 0.1 6.0)
STAMP_ADD (52.0 38.0 "5p" "Pale Green and Black" "" "" "SC 157" "")
STAMP_ADD (52.0 38.0 "7p" "Buff and Black" "" "" "SC 158" "")
ROW_START_FS (HN 6 0.1 6.0)
STAMP_ADD (52.0 38.0 "11p" "Pink and Black" "" "" "SC 159" "")
STAMP_ADD (52.0 38.0 "13p" "It Violet and Black" "" "" "SC 160" "")
PAGE_TEXT_CENTRE (HS 12 "\n1982, Feb 2 Litho. Perf.14x13.5")
ROW_START_FS (HN 6 0.1 6.0)
STAMP_ADD (52.0 38.0 "8p" "Jethou" "" "" "SC 236" "")
STAMP_ADD (52.0 38.0 "12p" "Fermain Bay" "" "" "SC 237" "")
ROW_START_FS (HN 6 0.1 6.0)
STAMP_ADD (52.0 38.0 "22p" "The Terres" "" "" "SC 238" "")
STAMP_ADD (52.0 38.0 "25p" "St. Pierre Point" "" "" "SC 239" "")
Hope you are all having a great weekend. It is actually nice and warm and sunny here in Minneapolis this afternoon.
Regards ... Tim.
Nice looking pages, Tim. Just curious -- how long did it take to complete the page? And can you see the page in its various stages as you build it? The code looks fairly complicated, but probably isn't once you get used to it. But I'll stick with Apple's Pages -- gotta love WYSIWYG!
By the way, shouldn't you be doing Webmaster stuff rather than stamp stuff? We don't pay you the big bucks so you can goof off with stamps!
Bob
PS -- I just realized -- Doh! -- that Clive Levinson, the creator of Album Easy -- lives here in Vancouver. He spoke to my stamp club a couple of years ago, and demonstrated his software. I recall that I was totally lost within about the first five minutes. It's also true that my mind clearly doesn't work the way that Clive's mind and Tim's mind work.
(Message edited by Bobstamp on March 21, 2009)
Hi Bob,
It was actually quite fun putting it together. It took about 45mins from start to finish, but it was the first time I had tried it and I was tinkering with it, working out what I wanted to. I think the next page would take about 10mins.
Sorry, about playing with stamps, I'll get back to the web work. ;)
Regards ... Tim.
I'd be interested to know if any members of Stamporama have used either the free program AlbumEasy or the program AlbumGen (which I believe costs about $40) to design album pages. If so, can you advise what your experience, positive or negative has been? I am particularly interested in finding out how easy each is to use for one who is technologically-challenged!
LarryD
re: Album Page Design
Larry,
Janet Klug who is with the philatelic infrastructure somewhere, wrote an article for Linn's on how to set up an album page using your word processing program whether it's, microsoft or corel. As long as your word processor has table and columns you can set up a very fine album page with some notations available. I believe you could find the article if you are a subscriber to Linn's or search the Linn's website on the reference link.
Joel
re: Album Page Design
Uh, you've heard of a computer called an Apple? Probably. You may not have heard of Apple iWork suite, which is not just in competition with Microsoft's Office, but kicks its digital butt right out of the picture. A darned near perfect blend of word processing and graphic design tools.
it took me about 20 minutes to produce this mock-up from scratch (minus the images of the stamps, which I already had, and which you wouldn't use anyway).
Pages -- the entire iWork suite of programs -- is truly wonderful software, and X times easier to use than MS Word, which I loath with all of my soul.
Bob
(Message edited by Bobstamp on March 11, 2009)
re: Album Page Design
Hi Applefanboy Bob ;) Apple make wonderful hard- and software (I really love my iPhone) but it really isn't that hard to make a page like that in Word. As long as you don't use the 2007 version. I got it on the notebook I have to use for work and after more than a year I still find it terribly unpractical to use (and I am in the IT business...) Word 2003 is a lot more userfriendly. But if you really want to make good pages do not use a wordprocessing program, go for DTP. I work with Adobe Indesign a lot, and it is great. Quite a steep learningcurve, I have to admit, but once you figure out on what principles it works, you can do anything with it, from editing your novels to making brochures.
Indesign is an expensive program though. I heard there are good freeware alternatives available. Scribus (www.scribus.net) seems to be pretty good. Available for Windows, Linux and Apple.
re: Album Page Design
Interesting discussion guys, especially from Applefanboy, but I don't think we are answering Larry's question. Larry, while you are looking at stamp album pages, have a look at http://www.stampalbums.com. The album pages offered here are quite good and I believe fairly inexpensive for what you get. I have subscribed to this site.
Regards ... Tim.
re: Album Page Design
that's correct, we were digressing quite a bit.
At the risk of digressing into another discussion: I have never understood the fascination among Northamericans for stampalbums like these and how everyone is busy with hinges etc. It must be because I am Dutch but I have been collecting for almost 30 years now (and I'm not yet 40 years old, so that is almost my whole life ) and only now I have begun to reach the level of completeness in some countries that I would like to think about a real stampalbum. Until now I have been perfectly happy with good quality black page Lighthouse stockbooks. around 13 euros for 32 pages.
re: Album Page Design
There was an article published in the Philatelic Exhibitor- journal of the American Association of Philatelic Exhibitors (AAPE) "Creating An Album Page Template (Microsoft Word) by Ross Marshall. I can send scan of article to anyone interested. Send email address to me via my profile email address. If anybody would like to see a copy of their journal, send mailing address to me.
re: Album Page Design
Hi Tim, I do subscribe to Bill Steiner's very reasonably priced stampalbums.com. However, you can't modify those pages unless you also have Adobe Pagemaker. I'd like to be able to create some pages of my own design for including collateral material in my albums.
Larry
re: Album Page Design
Jan-Simon,
So, when using the Lighthouse stockbooks, how do you catalog what you have so that you know what you have got?
Regards ... Tim.
re: Album Page Design
Hi John,
I'd like to read the article. I'll send you my email address.
regards ... Tim.
re: Album Page Design
Tim,
with the help of Michel catalogues, and when I reach a certain point I start making wantlists. But I must admit that it helps that I have a pretty good memory. Most of the time I know if I still need a stamp or not.
In the stockbooks I need to rearrange the stamps from time to time. No problem with that.
Jan-Simon
re: Album Page Design
I'm with Jan-Simon - a lot of what I have is not yet album-worthy and stock books are the way to go. I have a separate want list that I can take with me to stamp shows, etc. and I keep a 5X7 notepad handy to mark down what stamps are on each page and I put the loose notebook pages between the glassine protectors of each of the stock pages. I can move the stamps around as I need to and I try to leave space for stamps that I'm likely to add.
When I put together my Polish collection - thousands of stamps issued weekly by the communist postal authority - trying to put together an album in Scott or any other catalogue order would have resulted in two or three stamps per page in way too many places. My solution - sorting them by year (1951, 1952, 1953 and so on) and then just adding extra pages as I needed to for the year as I added stamps to my collection. I left space to fill out sets, but otherwise they went in as I got them. Jan-Simon, you should try that with your Bulgarian bonanza that you tried to impose on the rest of us a few months ago! ;-)
re: Album Page Design
Hmm... don't mention the Bulgarians... By the way, anyone interested in a nice packet of fine Bulgarian stamps? ;)
Back to the discussion: I read on another forum of someone who used Adobe Pagemaker to create his own pages. A lot of work, but the finished product looked pretty good.
(Message edited by Jan-Simon on March 12, 2009)
re: Album Page Design
Hi Jan,
This is Saleem, just returned from the agri business after some time (have to catch up a lot)
I do create my own album pages using Adobe Pagemaker and recently Adobe Indesign CS3. If one gets used to these album creation is a lot of fun and much more easier than any other softwares. The Adobe PM is a DTP software meant for such purposes. Sometime back I do put two of my album creations in the SOR auctions - these were US PNC singles and PNC strips of 3 album pages, not much interest here but I did sold a few copies at eBay.
Saleem
re: Album Page Design
My curiosity is aroused about Jan-Simon's Bulgarian collection. Can't find the thread about it. Where do I look?
Thanks,
Merv
re: Album Page Design
Hi Merv,
Check out "Let's Trade/Wanted to Buy" - "Offer Bulgaria" for Jan-Simon's attempt to introduce us to the wonderful world of Bulgarian CTO's.
(I should add, for all the grief I give Jan-Simon about his Bulgarian stamps, I too found myself with two binders of Bulgarian stamps a few years ago when I bought an auction lot (not SOR) that was advertised as an Eastern European mixture. Fortunately my dad was around to take them off my hands...) I only laugh because misery loves company.
Andrejs
re: Album Page Design
I like Bulgarian Air-Mail stamps -- CTO or not.
Dave N.
<><
re: Album Page Design
Dave,
I'm partial to some older airmails. Mainly because of design. The majority are just common,basic,unatractive stamps.
My most recent ones I acquired were the Switzerland C8 and C9.
The Bulgaria airmails, I'm partial to the early issues with overprints- C1-4 , C31-32 , C37-40 .
Nothing special about them,I just like their looks.
TOM
re: Album Page Design
Sorry Jansimon, did not mean to change the subject(albums).
I gave up printed pages years ago.Only use vario(and other brands) stock pages and three ring binders for my albums. I can add,move around,or eliminate a page or two, without haveing to print a new page. And there's no hinges or mounts needed.
So cant really comment on album pages,and have nothing positive to add to the thread.
TOM
re: Album Page Design
Well, After three days and 18 posts (not counting my own) I guess I can safely conclude the answer to my question is, "No."
Just a few "comments on the commments": I'm well-aware that Macs have the reputation of being much better handling graphics than PC's. However, investing in a Mac for my limited purposes wouldn't really be cost-effective.
I can see how using stock pages instead of albums has many advantages as they provide a lot more versatility than do albums. However, I'm reluctant to give up the pleasure of mounting my stamps and the occasional thrill of completion when I find a stamp which fills a space that had proven elusive.
Inasmuch as Albumeasy is a free download, I'll probably give it a try.
re: Album Page Design
Larry,
I have Albumeasy; it's a bit 'evasive'.....in that I mean it gives very little in the way of helpful instructions and once you start using the program you are pretty much on your own as far as figuring out how it works.
At least, that's MY experience with it. It's kind of a scattered program-that's the only way I can think to explain it.
In any case, yes it works. No, it's not great. But for a free program, its worth giving a try, I believe. It does have its limitations, but has its good points as well.
Best thing to do is as you said - give it a try!
And if you do, please tell me what YOU think of it!
re: Album Page Design
I've explored "print your own" album sites, and Bill Steiner's "Stamp Album Web" web site is worth looking into. From his home page, at http://www.stampalbums.com:
WELCOME! This website is devoted to providing affordable U.S. and foreign stamp album pages that you can print out on your own computer. There are over 50,000 U.S. and foreign pages available, and a complete set of over 6,500 Classic Era pages, with more pages being added all the time.
re: Album Page Design
I gave the AlbumEasy product a try this afternoon and I quite like the result. Here are a couple of pictures of what I did.
And just for your edification, here is the code that created this page.
# ------------------------------------------------------------------------------
# First setup the page elements that are common to all pages in this album.
# ------------------------------------------------------------------------------
ALBUM_PAGES_SIZE (215.9 279.4) #Set the page to US Letter (8.5 x 11)
#ALBUM_PAGES_SIZE (210.0 297.0) #Use this for A4
#left, right, top and bottom page margins
ALBUM_PAGES_MARGINS (25.0 12.0 15.0 15.0)
ALBUM_PAGES_BORDER (0.5 0.1 1.0)
ALBUM_PAGES_TITLE (TB 16 "Bailiwick of Guernsey")
ALBUM_PAGES_SPACING (6.0 6.0)
# ------------------------------------------------------------------------------
# Define the first page of this album
# ------------------------------------------------------------------------------
PAGE_START
#PAGE_TEXT (HN 10 "19th Century Prints ")
PAGE_TEXT_CENTRE (HS 12 "19th Century Prints");
PAGE_TEXT_CENTRE (HS 12 "\n1978, Feb 7 Litho. Perf.14x13.5")
ROW_START_FS (HN 6 0.1 6.0)
STAMP_ADD (52.0 38.0 "5p" "Pale Green and Black" "" "" "SC 157" "")
STAMP_ADD (52.0 38.0 "7p" "Buff and Black" "" "" "SC 158" "")
ROW_START_FS (HN 6 0.1 6.0)
STAMP_ADD (52.0 38.0 "11p" "Pink and Black" "" "" "SC 159" "")
STAMP_ADD (52.0 38.0 "13p" "It Violet and Black" "" "" "SC 160" "")
PAGE_TEXT_CENTRE (HS 12 "\n1982, Feb 2 Litho. Perf.14x13.5")
ROW_START_FS (HN 6 0.1 6.0)
STAMP_ADD (52.0 38.0 "8p" "Jethou" "" "" "SC 236" "")
STAMP_ADD (52.0 38.0 "12p" "Fermain Bay" "" "" "SC 237" "")
ROW_START_FS (HN 6 0.1 6.0)
STAMP_ADD (52.0 38.0 "22p" "The Terres" "" "" "SC 238" "")
STAMP_ADD (52.0 38.0 "25p" "St. Pierre Point" "" "" "SC 239" "")
Hope you are all having a great weekend. It is actually nice and warm and sunny here in Minneapolis this afternoon.
Regards ... Tim.
re: Album Page Design
Nice looking pages, Tim. Just curious -- how long did it take to complete the page? And can you see the page in its various stages as you build it? The code looks fairly complicated, but probably isn't once you get used to it. But I'll stick with Apple's Pages -- gotta love WYSIWYG!
By the way, shouldn't you be doing Webmaster stuff rather than stamp stuff? We don't pay you the big bucks so you can goof off with stamps!
Bob
PS -- I just realized -- Doh! -- that Clive Levinson, the creator of Album Easy -- lives here in Vancouver. He spoke to my stamp club a couple of years ago, and demonstrated his software. I recall that I was totally lost within about the first five minutes. It's also true that my mind clearly doesn't work the way that Clive's mind and Tim's mind work.
(Message edited by Bobstamp on March 21, 2009)
re: Album Page Design
Hi Bob,
It was actually quite fun putting it together. It took about 45mins from start to finish, but it was the first time I had tried it and I was tinkering with it, working out what I wanted to. I think the next page would take about 10mins.
Sorry, about playing with stamps, I'll get back to the web work. ;)
Regards ... Tim.