London Coin Fair Reimages

[Emperor Oli]

My scans of purchases from the fair in November were awful. My new digital camera arrived yesterday so I took some pictures on the offchance that they would be good, and I think they're a lot better than my scans!

[Emperor Oli]

The medal is refusing to be resized so I shall post that later.

Edited January 1, 2006 by Emperor Oli

[Chris Perkins]

How did you acheive the plain black backgrounds?

[Emperor Oli]

I photographed them on white card then removed the background in Photoshop and replaced it with black.

[mint_mark]

I just photograph a coin on black velvet... still use gimp to crop and combine obverse and reverse though.

Nice 50 kopeks

[Chris Perkins]

Is your gimp any better than having to cut the rev out and paste it in a space next to the obv? I wish I could find a program that did that automatically!

[Emperor Oli]

Is your gimp any better than having to cut the rev out and paste it in a space next to the obv? I wish I could find a program that did that automatically!

I know this is aimed at mintmark, but sometimes I don't remove the background around the coin. If I've shot it dead on, all I use is a circular marquee tool around the coin and a quick Copy/Paste into a new canvas: I remove the coin from the canvas.

[Chris Perkins]

Yes I do that too sometimes, although it can be time consuming. If someone can invent a programme that takes 2 scans/images of say 20 coins per image, revs on one, obvs on the other, and detects the coin and matches each of the 20 revs with the correct obvs (from about the same relative position) then I'd be the first customer!

[planz666]

Great pics Oli.

I have been taking digital pics of my coins for a while now,and even my Sony Ericsson mobile K750i(2megapixel) takes more accurate representations than my scanner...

I prefer to use genuine backgrounds,reds etc..though Paintshop pro is very user friendly......

[Emperor Oli]

Great pics Oli.

I have been taking digital pics of my coins for a while now,and even my Sony Ericsson mobile K750i(2megapixel) takes more accurate representations than my scanner...

I prefer to use genuine backgrounds,reds etc..though Paintshop pro is very user friendly......

I got a new camera (Sony P200 for those interested) and just took a shot of a £2 on the offchance that it would come out better than a scan. It did, so I spent yesterday afternoon photographing various coins. I don't have a fancy photo setup as some people tend to have, just a tripod and a handheld light source.

[Master Jmd]

I don't have a fancy photo setup as some people tend to have, just a tripod and a handheld light source.

More fancy than mine. I don't have a tripod, so what I do is place the camera on top of a big oxford dictionary and it comes out just fine

Although, come to think of it, I'm sure I used to have a tripod... Ah well.

Those are very nice pics oli, well done.

[mint_mark]

Hi Chris,

Gimp is basically a photoshop like application so you end up manually selecting the area and copying and pasting. When I used to sell a lot more on ebay I got it down to quite a quick procedure once I learned all the keyboard shortcuts.

What you suggest is definitely possible and something I have been meaning to try and implement myself for a while... I have the background (research in image processing) but sadly not the time. Picking out nearly circular shapes from a different coloured background and then compositing them into obverse/reverse pairs (according to a pre-selected pattern) should be ripe for automation.