We want to encourage all members to take part in exhibiting their favourite pages on-line. Some of our members are quite expert in creating HTML pages, but that is not a requirement for our exhibits. All we need is a nice clear scan of your album pages, in a file size that will download in a reasonable amount of time.

Summary

Here is what you need to do. All steps are explained in much greater detail below.

• Contact the webmaster at sor.webmaster@gmail.com to get an ID for your exhibit pages (see Filenames below)
• Scan your pages at an effective resolution of 75 dpi and save as JPEG (see Scanning Tips)
• Upload your files via FTP (preferred) or e-mail to exhibits@stamporama.com and notify the webmaster that you have done so. (see Uploading Files).
• That's it! Your pages will soon be on-line.

Scanning Tips for Members' Exhibits

There are some tricks you can use to get the best filesize/quality compromise. The goal is to generate pages that average 100kB or less, and no bigger than 150kB, while maintaining a clarity that allows text to be easily read.

Roy's scanning technique

Others may have equally good, or better, techniques but here is what works for me.

• I use my favourite scanning sotware (which one is not relevant) to scan the page at 300 dpi resolution, and save it as a *.tif file. An 8.5"x11" (or A4) page will result in a 25MB file, about 250 times too big! I save as a TIF because that method does not use any compression, and saves all the data the way it was scanned. This way, if I don't like the final results, I can come back to this file and start over without having to re-scan.

• I scan and save all the pages, then move over to my favourite image software. This software allows me to manipulate the images better than any I have found, and it allows me to do it in "batch mode" i.e. I show it the files to work on, set a few settings and it changes all the images at once! It is freeware and available for download here: Irfan View

• I use Irfan View to:
  • Resample at 25% (this reduces the image size to screen dimensions)
  • Sharpen by 20% (this has a noticeable impact on the final result)
  • Save as a JPEG (*.jpg) with 30% compression. Some image software shows the compression on a "quality" scale (Irfan does this) so the setting should be 70% "quality", others use "compression" - use 30% on these.

• The main pages are now ready for upload, but they must have the correct file names.

Every exhibitor is given a simple ID - mine is "roy". Each file must be named in this format: id-#.jpg, where # represents the page number. For example, the files for my first exhibit were named roy-1.jpg, roy-2.jpg ... roy-18.jpg. Case matters! Do not use capital letters, all filenames are expected to be in lower case letters. If you want to do a second exhibit, we will give you another id for it.

Uploading files

The next step is to upload your files to the Stamporama website. I have set up a special directory to accept these uploads via FTP. If you know what FTP is, you are all set, except that you need to contact me for the username and password for the upload directory, as well as for a unique ID for your filenames.

If you do not know what FTP is, don't despair. It is a very simple program that allows you to transfer files around the Internet. There are many varieties. My favourite is WS_FTP, available as a free download here: www.ftpplanet.com. There is also an excellent beginners' FTP tutorial. This is something well worth learning if you want to know more about Interent tools.

Don't want to, or don't have time to learn something new? Ok, you can e-mail your pictures, but it's a bit more of a pain for your webmaster. Do not e-mail pictures to the regular webmaster address!! I will concoct imaginative punishments for anyone who does! They plug up e-mail boxes and I am too impatient to wait for 5 minute downloads of unknown data! I have set up a separate email account that I will only check when advised that something has been sent. You may send your pictures to exhibits@stamporama.com and then advise the webmaster at webmaster@stamporama.com that the pictures are there. However, I repeat, this is more of a pain, because I have to download all your pages, and then re-upload them. If you FTP them to the server, they are already there, and I can easily move them to the exhibit directory.

That's it. Give me a little time and your exhibit will be available for all to enjoy.