Cropping/Editing your Photo

Greetings Collectors,

Sorry for the delay in getting to part two. I wanted to get this done Friday night, as I am sure most of you are very busy during the week, and the weekends probably give you a little more free time. As I continue this series I plan on doing one post per week and would like to have it done by Fri. eve. Saturday at the very latest.

Some of you have your own brand of software you like to use when editing your photos so bear in mind that these instructions are for the use of the program by "Irfanview". If you have not done so already, go to Irfanview.com for a free download.

Once you have your photos taken and have successfully transfered them to your pc you will then do the following in Irfanview:

(1) Out of your photos click and open the thumbnail or "double-click" the thumbnail of that you wish crop. This is in order to have that photo appear before you.

(2) If your photo is not as straight as you would like in the vertical/horozontal (and this becomes very important when you start the "cropping" process) then in the upper left of your screen click on "image" and on the dropdown, click on "custom fine rotation". When the box appears you will see a blue "highlighted" area. Hit your "backspace" to make that disappear. Now in order to align your photo which may not be that far from what you are wanting, you need to type in a % of whichever way your pic needs to go. If the top is tilted slightly to the right then start small by typing a -.67 or however much the top needs to tilt back to the left to be perfectly vertical. Be sure to put the "negative minus sign" (-) followed by point (.) and then the amount. Then click ok and watch your photo take that step to making the top of the pic back to the left. If your photo is already tilted too far to the left, you need to go the other way. Start with small increments but without the (-) sign ie .67 or .48 or . whatever. Play with this feature and you will end up having a "perfect" photo to crop.

(3) In the upper left corner of your screen click on "edit" and on the drop-down, click on the 3rd down from the top (create custom crop selection)

(4) Once the box appears, click the "red X" and git rid of that box. You are now ready to crop your photo. I put my cursor in the upper left corner of exactly where I imagine my vertical and horozontal lines to be and then hold down on my mouse, I drag my cursor from top left to the top right 'til I reach the point where my right side boundary is and then downward to where my bottom horozontal boundary is and then release my mouse. This will be something that you will steadily get better at and even after you have released your mouse, and your boundary lines are not where you want them, you can adjust any of the four lines by rolling your cursor over any line to be adjusted until the "double arrows" appear (either left-right or up-down) Again play with this and before long you will get good enough to start at the top left and drag to the right and downward all in one step and end up with the perfect box around your coin or around your whole slab. Before you start this step, decide whether you want the end result to be of "just the coin" or of the "entire slab".

(5) Now go back to the top left of your screen and click on "edit" once more and on the drop-down click on "crop selection" (8th item down on the drop-down) You will now see an image of just your coin or slab.

(6)Now what you have is the finished shot of your coin and the original shot you took is of "no more use to you". You then in order to replace that original shot with this one you have just cropped, go back up to the upper left of your screen and click on "file". Now on the drop-down click on "save(original folder). A screen will appear with your coin/coins in a large box & a Jpeg/gif save option smaller box to the right of the large box. For now, forget everything but the "save quality" and on that you want to make sure that the slide scale from 1-100 is all the way over to the right (on 100) (good). Now at the bottom of the large box click "save". Once you do that another small rectagle box will appear and ask if you want to replace the existing file/photo/pic. Click "yes" that you do want to replace the existing photo in that file. You have just replaced your original photo with your "new cropped photo".

As I said in a previous post and this one as well, I use Irfanview and for thoses of you who don't, I don't know how much help if any these posts will be. Also You may just take one pic at the time (maybe two if you count the obverse & reverse) or you may take numerous pics. I am showing you the order I have learned and what I have found after many hours of "trial & error". Through this whole process I was always searching for a better & quicker way of doing all of this, because I had several hundred slabs to shoot, crop & resize. And this is the way I found that was the fastest and ended up with the very best results of all that I tried. Believe me when I say, I made a ton and a half mistakes to get where I am today. And the way I found best was:

(1) Take all pictures 1st, and if a whole set was to be shot and on every set there are "holes", I would shoot all the coins in the order they appeared in the set (you will find this one tip the most valuble later when you are actually putting the finished product Cropped&Sized into your gallery) In that order I would shoot the obverse 1st and then the reverse (pic #1 & #2)

(2) Then after all the shots were taken, I would then crop each and every one, both obverse & reverse. (If you are like me you will find that by doing several shots, as in ever how many coins you have in that set, you get very good and fast with that particular step the more you crop)

(3) Then I would re-size each and every one, there again getting better & much faster as I would proceed along. I do alot of buying and selling on ebay and the size there is no problem unlike it is here at the Collectors Society. So I would have two sizes, one that was just the finished cropped coin and an "additional" shot (same shot, just sized smaller for here at the CS) And then if this was a coin pic that you wanted to include in a journal posting, a third example sized at the "less than 75kb" that is needed for the journals. So... (A) Full size cropped photo (B) Photo sized at less than 120kb for gallery posting © A yet smaller photo at less than 75kb for journal posting.

I really hope that this will help those of you that are in the same boat I was in last fall when I knew nothing. When these series of posts are through, please share some of your photos in your journals. I know that I not only speak of myself when I say, we are looking forward to your coin photos.

I leave you with one of three $10 Liberty gold coins purchased in the last couple weeks. I don't know what the population is at PCGS but I was surprized to see that at NGC, only 280 have been graded in "all grades" 67 in MS-61 82 in MS-62, 20 in MS-63 and one lone example in MS-64 with none higher. There are 110 coins in MS-60 and lower. Thats not very many out of a mintage of 115,500. Now I need to take a serious break from spending. Happy Collecting & "picture taking".

WKF