How does one post on "Adverts/Leaflets" from club?

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I have numerous vintage guide books, leaflets and posters of Tamiya cars that Tamiya sent me around 1990-91. (Anyone else aware Tamiya made full-size posters of their cars?) I wrote to Shizuoka-City in early 1990's hoping for ANY Hilux or Bruiser parts. They sent me multiple leaflets, posters-including Tamiya's first 100 and a R/C guide book from 1983 (in addition to a limited parts list). How does a (paying) member upload to these pages? Much thanks.

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[RedFrits]

You can put them in your showroom as misc.. Or, ask chris his mailadress??

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Sounds good. Chris, I'm assuming is our "netsmith"?

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[terry.sc]

To get them into the reviews section make sure the images you send are top quality. They need to be scans to keep the quality high, digital photos don't give a good enough image. unless the images are as good as the ones in the reviews section Chris won't put them in there.

Here's what I do. I find the best way to get the best images possible scan them at a high resolution (I use 300dpi) and then adjust the image to make sure it is the best you can make it. If the scanner has a descreen option try that and play around until you get the best image you can. Once you have the settings you should be able to use them for all your scans. I then use Photoshop to adjust the levels, curves and colour balance to get the best looking image, use whatever editing program you have to get the image as good as you can. You will now need to shrink it down to 800 pixels wide (height doesn't matter) to send to Chris(NetsmithUK) for posting on the site. If it looks pixelated after resizing or there is a moire pattern then first shrink to an odd size such as 930 pixels then shrink them down to 800 pixels wide. Save them as jpegs and send them to scans@tamiyaclub.com as obviously named jpg files.

If it is a magazine article you will also need to send in the name of the magazine used, the author

and the date of publication.

[eek!]

Thanks Terry. Maybe a silly question, but how do I scan posters and R/C guide books as they are larger than a standard scanner (at least the ones I can buy)?

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[T.C~Tamiya]

I reckon a copy shop will scan them for you but if they're only going to be 800 px wide I don't see why a digital camera won't work just as well.

[terry.sc]

You should be able to scan them in sections and stitch them together in an image editing program. Each side of the 'List of Models' I added were scanned in 3 pieces and put together in Photoshop. use copy and paste to add the missing pieces to the original image. Do you have a decent image editing program such as Photoshop, Paint Shop Pro or similar?

As digital cameras take the image from one point for large images the edges of the posters curve and as the camera cannot focus on the whole of the image some parts of the image will end up slightly out of focus, as seen in the pictures you have put in your showroom. Also all but high end cameras save images as jpegs which means some image quality is lost before you even start trying to edit the image.

A lot more images get sent to Chris than are actually put in the reviews section. The ones rejected are because they aren't up to the quality of the images already online.

[T.C~Tamiya]

Jpegs only lose quality if they are compressed for the web, straight from a camera they as good as any other bitmap image.

I see your point about the curvature though but this would diminish if you stand far enough away from the poster.

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I think my digital camera is not going to cut it, besides it's almost impossible to hold it still so the picture doesn't blur as I can't use the flash (suppose I could use a tripod though).

I've been thinking about taking these books and posters and having them plastic encased for preservation and maybe I could have them scanned while I'm there.

[DJTheo]

quote:Originally posted by T.C~Tamiya

Jpegs only lose quality if they are compressed for the web, straight from a camera they as good as any other bitmap image.

I see your point about the curvature though but this would diminish if you stand far enough away from the poster.

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Jpegs is a non-lossless compression, so it always has losses, thats why on good cameras you can have also the images saved in uncompressed RAW format, which has better quality but huge file size.

On a camera with a good lens the edges should be similary in focus, if not you could also use a small apperture opening (>5) but there are still problems with wrinkles, colour temperature and reflections, much better and easier to scan documents, where you don't have all those problems.

Cheers

[T.C~Tamiya]

While that may be technically true, For all practical purposes though, with a Jpeg set to the minimum compression the losses are not really visible to the human eye.

This is a Jpeg from my camera that has no extra compression and I can't notice any obvious loss of quality.

[T.C~Tamiya]

Here's the same picture with high compression... not so good, ugg yuk.

[terry.sc]

But the printed text in the jpegs isn't sharp, neither are the lines in the illustration. The faded section of the illustration is also very grainy. Trying to keep a whole page of text and line illustrations sharp and clear is the aim. 3d objects do not come into it, although in the top image there are artefacts around the tyre spikes - the camera has created a stronger contrast between the spikes and the background so there is a light band around the edges of the spikes. You would not get this if the image had been scanned.

quote:Originally posted by T.C~Tamiya

Jpegs only lose quality if they are compressed for the web, straight from a camera they as good as any other bitmap image.

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I take it you've never worked with images for print. The highest quality jpeg will produce a file only a fraction of the size of a psd or tiff image. The scans I work from while correcting the images are 300dpi to start with, thats around 9Mpixels and the files are usually 25 - 30 Mb. That's a lot more information than is in a jpeg and enables me to adjust the settings to get the best quality image possible before shrinking it down to 800 pixels wide.

Saying a jpeg is as good as other bitmap formats is like saying an mp3 file is as good as the original CD. That extra bit of quality just isn't there.

[T.C~Tamiya]

quote:I take it you've never worked with images for print

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Who's talking about images for print ? the original question related to uploading pictures for viewing on tamiyaclub.

My point was that for the purpose of displaying an image on the web (which will end up as a Jpeg anyway) using a Jpeg as a starting point doesn't mean the image will be lower quality than if you had started with a bitmap.

quote:The faded section of the illustration is also very grainy.

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And on the actual real tyre box it's just as "very"?? grainy too, that's not a Jpeg quality issue, remember the picture is a close up, it's larger than actual size.

[terry.sc]

Sorry about the grainy comment, I was assuming the original drawing was printed properly.

The comment about printed images is that you stated that images straight from a camera are as good as bitmap formats and that they only lose quality when compressed for the web. My point is that printing out a scanned sheet of text saved as a psd, tiff or bmp file will produce a clear, sharp image. Printing the same image saved as a jpeg even at the highest quality will not be as clear or as sharp so jpegs are not as good a format as any of the bitmap ones. This isn't usually a problem for normal photographs as pictures usually aren't filled with lots of sharp contrasts that text gives. Jpegs tend to produce a halo effect around strongly contrasting areas, as shown on the halo around the spikes on the tyres. This also appears as artefacts in the image when it is scaled down to size.

Using the highest quality image to start with gives you the best chance of getting the best image at the end. Most of the old uK magazines I scan tend to be badly printed on cheap paper, have faded a bit over time and they also have a pinkish tone as the paper has aged. I use Photoshops tools to correct these and changing the colour balance, colour levels and contrast any of the artefacts jpegs contain tend to pop right out of the image.

[T.C~Tamiya]

Ok you win... I'm just off to bin my £500 digital camera right now.

[DJTheo]

quote:Originally posted by T.C~Tamiya

Ok you win... I'm just off to bin my £500 digital camera right now.

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Rather just give another £50 for a scanner for documents, btw if you camera costs that much you can have it also save images in uncompressed RAW or TIFF format. [8D]

Cheers