After a lot of testing and asking opinions, I think I've settled on the format for my coin images. This is for my coin image inventory and show-and-tell, not necessarily selling images. The outer border will match the metal (silver in this case.) This image needs a slight bit of tweaking. Some white pixels crept into the background. And maybe some lighting adjustments. But the general format is fixed, so criticize only if you have some serious hiccups with it. Kudos welcome.
Kanga - I don't like the coins "touching" each other in the picture. Otherwise, I like your approach.
Other than the white pixels around the perimeter (which gives the coin a "ragged" appearance), I like the basic format. Nice job!
They actually aren't touching, it's just because of the editing.... This is what it should look like...
I would give it even more space between the two views (not a lot more). It is distracting to me to view the edge of the obverse, for example, and see part of the reverse in my focal area.
What editing software do you use? I use photoshop. To fix your example I did a wand selection then expanded 2 pixels then feathered 1 pixel and deleted that selection. I did a very fast edit inbetween the coins. If you need any assistance let me know.
I've got Paint Shop Pro 7. In general I understand what you did. I'm not sure PSP7 can do the sort of editing that you did. But I'm a real rookie with this package. My bedtime reading is two third-party guides for this application. (VERY effective at putting me to sleep.) I found one VERY annoying omission in PSP7. There doesn't seem to be a circular crop. I use Microsoft Photo Editor for that function.
I align to the slab so if the coin is rotated within the slab, the image will be rotated. The exception occurs when the rotation is too much. "Too much" is a subjective judgment.
I orient the camera to the slab, not the coin. So if the coin is rotated in the slab, the image will be rotated. I override this if the rotation is too much. "Too much" is a subjective judgment. Oops, sorry for the duplicate post. Computer/Internet hiccup.
You might want to take a look at photoscape.org, they have a free software pkg that I have been using that does do round crops, also is a breeze to put coins side by side. I can crop two pictures, place them side by side in less than a minute. Best part is its all drag and drop. I have Photoshop, paintshop etc.. they are great programs and can do far more in the way of editing than this freebie, but for what your doing this is the answer. Simple to use too. : ) Thats what I like! Cropped, black added, uploaded to photobucket in less than a minute.
There probably isn't a circular crop, but there has to be a circular selection. No image is a 'circle', all images are x by y in dimensions. What you would want to do is choose the selection tool, and I'm not sure how PSP7 is layed out, but if you hover or maybe hold down mouse it'll list the other selection methods, and it should show you Circular selection. Then I think the shortcut key in both PSP7 and PS to make a perfect circle from the center is shift-alt (this will start from cursor, work it's way out/constrained so you won't get an oval), then invert the selection and delete, that should get you everything outside the coin. Remember work with biggest image size possible, then scale down when finished for best results.
