Post by Ryan on Aug 20, 2013 16:28:36 GMT
You can use very basic image editing commands to check perforations on scanned stamps. These simple methods can be used to check for signs of reperfing on classic stamps which might be concerning you. With some extra preparation, you could also use it as a way of working with your perforation gauge online.
The example stamp I will be using here comes from a recent post made by user perfs12. He has a pair of stamps from Ceylon with a perforation of 13-1/2 x 14 - this perforation is unlisted in SG, Scott and Michel - there is a listing for a stamp with a perforation of 14 on all 4 sides, but nothing with a 13-1/2 perf on the top and bottom. For this example, all I was looking to do was to prove that the top perforation was in fact different than the sides.
Any version of Windows will have a copy of Microsoft Paint on it, all the way back to the stone age of Windows 1.0. I'm working on a Windows 7 system - different operating systems might have different ways of making the program run, but it shouldn't be too tough to figure out. Alternately, you could use almost any image editing software - these are very simple commands which should be present in the most basic programs. On Windows 7, I click the start button, click on "All Programs", find the "Accessories" folder and open that. Located there is Microsoft Paint - on my system, it is simply titled "Paint".
Use Paint to open the image you want to edit. If the scan was made at a high resolution or if you're looking at something large like a cover or a block of stamps, you might see only a portion of your image since Paint will show it at 100% without resizing it to fit your screen. You can zoom in or out if needed by using commands found in the Zoom portion of the View menu. From there, go back to the Home menu and click the Select button to get ready to select a piece of the image - on older versions of Paint, you don't have a Home menu and you won't see the word "Select", you'll just see an icon you can click showing a dotted line rectangle (at the top of the pile of icons on the sidebar).
What I want to do is to take the horizontal row of perforations on the top of the stamps and turn them on their side to compare them against the vertical perforations. The catalogues say they're both supposed to be perf 14 - if the holes don't line up, we'll know that perf12 might have something special with his stamps that isn't listed in major catalogues.
Clicking the Select button will give you a crosshair mouse pointer
(actually, the Select mode is the default when you open an image - if you haven't done anything yet, these crosshairs will already be active). To select a rectangular portion of your image, locate the crosshairs in one corner of the rectangle, hold down your mouse button, and create a selection zone by dragging the crosshairs to the diagonally opposite corner of the rectangle. When you release your mouse button, the crosshairs will change into a move pointer 
and the selection zone will be outlined with a dotted line.
We need to keep this selected portion of the image and throw everything else away. If you're lucky, you have a Crop command in the Image menu. If your operating system is old enough, you're not lucky and you have to do some extra work. You will need to Copy the selected portion (found in the Edit menu), create a New image area (found in the File menu) WITHOUT SAVING THE OLD ONE, resize the new image area to make certain it is smaller than the cropped section you just copied (found in the Attributes part of the Image menu - use something tiny like 5x5 pixels) and Paste the selected portion back to the screen (found in the Edit menu). Windows 7 users like me are lucky - click on Crop and this is what you'll see.
Now we need to turn these these horizontal perfs on their side so we can compare them against the vertical perfs. Click on Rotate (found in the Image menu for users with older systems) and choose Rotate right 90°.
More to come in the next post - I'm up against the attachment limit.
Ryan
The example stamp I will be using here comes from a recent post made by user perfs12. He has a pair of stamps from Ceylon with a perforation of 13-1/2 x 14 - this perforation is unlisted in SG, Scott and Michel - there is a listing for a stamp with a perforation of 14 on all 4 sides, but nothing with a 13-1/2 perf on the top and bottom. For this example, all I was looking to do was to prove that the top perforation was in fact different than the sides.
Any version of Windows will have a copy of Microsoft Paint on it, all the way back to the stone age of Windows 1.0. I'm working on a Windows 7 system - different operating systems might have different ways of making the program run, but it shouldn't be too tough to figure out. Alternately, you could use almost any image editing software - these are very simple commands which should be present in the most basic programs. On Windows 7, I click the start button, click on "All Programs", find the "Accessories" folder and open that. Located there is Microsoft Paint - on my system, it is simply titled "Paint".
Use Paint to open the image you want to edit. If the scan was made at a high resolution or if you're looking at something large like a cover or a block of stamps, you might see only a portion of your image since Paint will show it at 100% without resizing it to fit your screen. You can zoom in or out if needed by using commands found in the Zoom portion of the View menu. From there, go back to the Home menu and click the Select button to get ready to select a piece of the image - on older versions of Paint, you don't have a Home menu and you won't see the word "Select", you'll just see an icon you can click showing a dotted line rectangle (at the top of the pile of icons on the sidebar).
What I want to do is to take the horizontal row of perforations on the top of the stamps and turn them on their side to compare them against the vertical perforations. The catalogues say they're both supposed to be perf 14 - if the holes don't line up, we'll know that perf12 might have something special with his stamps that isn't listed in major catalogues.
Clicking the Select button will give you a crosshair mouse pointer
(actually, the Select mode is the default when you open an image - if you haven't done anything yet, these crosshairs will already be active). To select a rectangular portion of your image, locate the crosshairs in one corner of the rectangle, hold down your mouse button, and create a selection zone by dragging the crosshairs to the diagonally opposite corner of the rectangle. When you release your mouse button, the crosshairs will change into a move pointer and the selection zone will be outlined with a dotted line.We need to keep this selected portion of the image and throw everything else away. If you're lucky, you have a Crop command in the Image menu. If your operating system is old enough, you're not lucky and you have to do some extra work. You will need to Copy the selected portion (found in the Edit menu), create a New image area (found in the File menu) WITHOUT SAVING THE OLD ONE, resize the new image area to make certain it is smaller than the cropped section you just copied (found in the Attributes part of the Image menu - use something tiny like 5x5 pixels) and Paste the selected portion back to the screen (found in the Edit menu). Windows 7 users like me are lucky - click on Crop and this is what you'll see.
Now we need to turn these these horizontal perfs on their side so we can compare them against the vertical perfs. Click on Rotate (found in the Image menu for users with older systems) and choose Rotate right 90°.
More to come in the next post - I'm up against the attachment limit.
Ryan
