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I'm getting near the end of my PCGS Roosevelt Proof dimes set and have been thinking of making a photo book with a fairly highres picture of each dime in the set. I was thinking of a shot of the coin in the slab - sort of an inventory of the collection. Something like the shot below. I figure that for a standard book I'd need to place 4 pictures on a page with one as the front cover and one as the rear cover. I get offers on books like this all the time from places like Snapfish and WalGreens.

 

6755908245_d03287eb87_z.jpg

1952 10C PR66 by UGotaHaveArt, on Flickr

 

Has anyone done anything like this? Do you have any results you'd like to share with us. Ideas?

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I would (still) maintain that you would be better served by one picture of the slab (or even just the slab label) and two closeups of the coin. If you put the slab on one page, and on the facing page the obverse and reverse, you still only require two pages per coin, but you will be able to see the coin (which is ultimately the point of the whole exercise) much better. Of course getting the pages to face would require that the front cover _not_ be one of your pictures. (You could create a title) Then page 2 would be the 1950 proof slab, page 3 (facing page 2) would be blown up obverse and reverse, the next page would be 1951, etc.

 

With some work you could gin up combined images--one jpg file that has both obverse and reverse on it.

 

BEWARE! Even if you decide not to take my previous suggestion, whatever you do, make sure your images are the right aspect ratio that the photo printer won't crop them. For example, if you hit them with something that is 1000 pixels wide by 500 tall, and you ask for a 4x6 print, you will get 125 pixels cropped off each side of the image, and you will get only 750x500 of your pixels on the paper. I know this because I've taken "square" images of coins in to be developed and had the tops and bottoms cropped out, rather than extra space on the sides like I expected (in other words the machinery is not set up to ensure the whole image gets printed even if it means letterboxing of some type; it's set up to ensure that there is no white space). The moral of the story is, _before_ you get the book made find out what aspect ratio they print at and adjust accordingly!

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I would (still) maintain that you would be better served by one picture of the slab (or even just the slab label) and two closeups of the coin. If you put the slab on one page, and on the facing page the obverse and reverse, you still only require two pages per coin, but you will be able to see the coin (which is ultimately the point of the whole exercise) much better. Of course getting the pages to face would require that the front cover _not_ be one of your pictures. (You could create a title) Then page 2 would be the 1950 proof slab, page 3 (facing page 2) would be blown up obverse and reverse, the next page would be 1951, etc.

 

With some work you could gin up combined images--one jpg file that has both obverse and reverse on it.

 

BEWARE! Even if you decide not to take my previous suggestion, whatever you do, make sure your images are the right aspect ratio that the photo printer won't crop them. For example, if you hit them with something that is 1000 pixels wide by 500 tall, and you ask for a 4x6 print, you will get 125 pixels cropped off each side of the image, and you will get only 750x500 of your pixels on the paper. I know this because I've taken "square" images of coins in to be developed and had the tops and bottoms cropped out, rather than extra space on the sides like I expected (in other words the machinery is not set up to ensure the whole image gets printed even if it means letterboxing of some type; it's set up to ensure that there is no white space). The moral of the story is, _before_ you get the book made find out what aspect ratio they print at and adjust accordingly!

 

Good points Steve. I was trying to do some postcard images of a large cent of mine before Christmas and never could get the image to fit on a 4x6 postcard without either major distortion or edge cropping. I got pretty darn close but lost focus on it as I had other things to do.

 

The prime purpose of the book would be a photo inventory of my slabs which is why I want to keep the large slab photo in place. I want the certification number to be easily readable. I have thought about a composite with large slab pic and then second half of pic divided with high res obv & rev of the coin. I'm going to play around with it a bit when I'm done with my ebay listings.

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Perhaps a photo like this would do. I'll play with something like this and then see what happens when I try to move a few into a book format.

 

6756894563_30519fbb2d_z.jpg

1909 1C MS64 BRN Master by UGotaHaveArt, on Flickr

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Good points Steve. I was trying to do some postcard images of a large cent of mine before Christmas and never could get the image to fit on a 4x6 postcard without either major distortion or edge cropping. I got pretty darn close but lost focus on it as I had other things to do.

 

The prime purpose of the book would be a photo inventory of my slabs which is why I want to keep the large slab photo in place. I want the certification number to be easily readable. I have thought about a composite with large slab pic and then second half of pic divided with high res obv & rev of the coin. I'm going to play around with it a bit when I'm done with my ebay listings.

 

What I ended up doing with some pics of coins (where I didn't care about the slab) was cropping close to the coin to get a square, masking the background out to white, then adding 5% to top and bottom, 7% to the left and 58% to the right. This gave a new ratio of 110 : 165, which turns out to be 3:2 or 4:6. That's how I turned a square image into a 4x6. I could then take this to the developer and I'd get a pic with the coin almost filling the left side of the photograph. I could then use a knife to trim the excess off the right side, resulting in a square picture for my exhibit. If you want a 4x6 print to be your end result, though, you probably want it centered, so I'd add 33% to both left and right instead of what I did. But it's important to have some space around the edges of the coin, because they always end up cropping a little bit (I think they feel it's better to do that than to have a white stripe show up, ever, on the edge of a print--so they guarantee that won't happen by losing some of the image).

 

What you did above is about what I had in mind for your book, except that I was thinking of putting the slab in one image, on the left side of the opened booklet, and the two closeups in a second image and have them on the facing page. Again, use white fill to get the aspect ratio right! If you do decide to keep them together on the same page, you'll want to add some space above and/or below the rather square layout you have to make it properly rectangular. Maybe you could put some text up there in the image, like the date, mintage, die variety, any special notes about that coin, etc. (I imagine just about any image editor will let you write text.)

 

I remember now, struggling to get powerpoint to give me a page template with a big square graphic on the left of the slide, and a narrow column of text on the right, so I could put a coin and caption/notes on the slide without shrinking the image of the coin any more than necessary to get it to fit on the slide. I don't think I ever succeeded. Perhaps I should try that again someday.

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Seeing as the coin is the main object why not have a larger image of the obverse with a smaller cropped image containing just the info part of the slab below it. This could then be 4x6. Ditto for the reverse.

 

This is a good idea. I've seen a number of setups along that line that are quite appealing. I just don't really know how they've done them. Something for me to play with. Thanks.

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6756894563_30519fbb2d_z-vert.jpg

 

This was done using Photoscape(free software) just by a few clicks, using combine, in a few seconds.

 

Nicely done. That type of thing would allow me to get a solid coin detail shot and still maintain the info from the slab for inventory purposes. In fact it would allow me to use a different lense setup for the coin photo and the slab photo.

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