Toolemera Blog

Website Update Website Woes

The final stage of a final (if you believe that one, I have the Golden Gate Bridge for sale, cheap) Toolemera Press website rebuild is now live. Which is to say that lots of links and stuff will be messed up for a while. Honestly, I do check everything before uploading. In this case, I had to take down the entire site and reload from scratch. Lots of CSS code needed to be cleaned up, images resampled, old pages and their ghosts removed, etc.

No matter how hard I try, there are always some errant links that go poof. If you come across any links or images or pdf files that continue to be recalcitrant in their bad behavior, just drop me a line and I'll fix it in the evening.

There have been some major navigational changes on the website:

The primary subjects are now Trade Catalogs; Books & Booklets; Photographs / Trades & Crafts; Manufacturers & Merchants. The EAIA has it's own spot on the Gateway page as does Jim Esten's ISP service.

Trade Catalogs is now compressed into from "By Type" and "By Date" into "By Year". Within each set the catalogs are arranged in  order by year and I will continue to add new material in this order.

1800-1869
1970-1979
1880-1889
1890-1899
1900-1909
1910-1919
1920-1929
1930-1939
1940-1949
1950-1959

When I add stuff from later than 1959 I'll figure that part out then.

There is a new navigation bar for Trade Catalogs which is giving me problems. It's there, but not yet working as it should. Never fear, I will whip it into shape soon.

What was Trades & Crafts is now Photographs : Trades & Crafts.

Three distinct sections have been combined: Manufacturers; Merchants and Manuscripts is now one section: Manufacturers & Merchants. Arranged by business or personal name, I am much happier with this navigation scheme, based on a book indexing format ported to a website. Each item has it's own page. All in all, this should make updating material much easier, will allow me to remember what I have on the site and hopefully make it easier for people to find what they want, or just to browse the site.

How did I come up with this stuff? I've been watching the overall website stats through cPanel X, the excellent set of site management tools Jim Esten has provided. By tracking entry and exit pages, hit ratios on pages, etc. etc., I can see what brings in the most traffic and what areas are ignored or never found. While reading an interesting by dry book on Indexing and Abstracting (what library types read at lunch for fun...), I realized that a good old book style Index was called for.

It's interesting how, with the transfer of so much knowledge to the web, that old style indexing still works. Search is fine, but you have to know what to search for. Browsing is fun, but people tend to browse only what they are interested in. Hopefully, this new Index for Manufacturers & Merchants as well as the date delineated list for Trade Catalogs and the focus on Photographs for Trades & Crafts will allow people to enjoy the site while helping them to find what they are looking for. Or to find what they haven't been looking for.

Till next, Gary

Postscript: Thanks to feedback, all but one bad link has been fixed. The last one for 'How To Paint Your House', will take a bit longer... sort of like how long it really takes to get around to painting your house. And, the Trade Catalogs nav bar is working too. For now.

Scanning Tips Revisited

Recently I was asked: "how do you scan those catalogs? My scanner seems to produce only so-so images...) or something to that effect. This question pops up on a fairly regular basis, so an answer on the blog seems like a good idea.

The short answer is:

Scanning is one third hardware, one third software, one third post-scan processing (if needed).

Hardware
I'm partial to Epson Perfection scanners. Microtek also made a great line of entry level pro scanners, but they were costly (I have an i800). I say were, because Microtek just left the scanning hardware market. Some people swear by Canon, but I have found that for my purposes of scanning old paper, Epson does a better job. The Epson V500 is new and very nice machine. The cover is lightweight and has indents to hold it half way open... a very nice feature the Canon machines lack. The new imaging system is fast yet highly accurate.

A note on scanning speed. Faster is not always better. The average home scanner actually does this little trick of scanning two lines for one. Essentially, the scanner is grabbing two lines (as in Lines Per Inch or  LPI) and interpreting them as single lines. When you move up to a pro scanner, such as Microtek or the Epson graphics machines, the scan is slow because you are getting one line per line instead of two.

Trick: For books, instead of using the cover, place a piece of black cloth over the item.
Trick: Scanners don't scan to the very edge of the platen. Place a small spacer of cardboard along the top and right hand edge of the platen to use up the 'dead' spots.

Software
The software supplied by the company is OK if you are willing to play with the Levels adjustments to tweak the image. Typically though, the extent and varieties of tweaks will be limited. Why tweak? The better the initial scan, the better the final image. You can work on the image in post-scan but you can't create something from data that just ain't there. I'll talk about Levels and all those cool things in the next blog post.

Alternate software is better. Vuescan is moderately priced and will handle most any scanner on the market. The interface is a little funny and takes some getting used to. That said, there are both basic and advanced settings that can do some very powerful things. I've just never adjusted to the workflow of Vuescan. It has always seemed counter-intuitive to me. Silverscan from LaserSoft Imaging is my favorite and an industry standard. The downside is that Silverscan is keyed to the particular scanner model. Buy a new model, you have to buy a new copy of Silverscan. But... this is an extremely powerful hunk of software that allows you to do anything from basic scanning with built-in presets or customize to your hearts content.

Really, you ask? But why should I spend more money when my scanner has already shipped with it's own software package? Scanning output (or 'imaging' as the pundits like to say... makes them feel more important I guess) is only as good as the software. Produce a better image and you have something to work with. Really good scan software will allow you to perform Photoshop style enhancements on the Preview image before it is scanned. The general idea is to produce one image that contains all the data you will need for post-scan processing. Post-scan processing is simply what you do in Photoshop, Photoshop Elements, Acrobat or the image/pdf creator of your choice.

Trick: Adjust Sharp and Contrast in the scanning software. Don't worry about Brightness. That is best handled in post-scan work. Unsharp Mask is only useful when scanning original color photographs that have tons of detail. Old photographs should never be hit with Unsharp Mask.
Trick: Descreen is useful if you are scanning old engravings, halftone images (those images made up of lots of little dots such as magazine and newspaper photographs) or any image containing lots of fine lines. You'll know you need to descreen if you see the evil moire patterns in your final image.

Image Type and Specs
When preparing for a PDF or an image to post online, I generally scan to TIFF at 300 DPI Grayscale for the average item. If there are complex engravings, halftones or similar graphics on the page, I use 400 dpi. 400 Dpi approximates the typical halftone grid, often reducing or eliminating the moire junk. If scanning for eventual OCR, I always use 400 DPI Grayscale or Color. If I want a Black & White (Bitonal) image, I'll remove the Color or Grayscale portion in post-scan imaging and adjust the Levels to clear any background clutter. Why not just scan in Black & White? Because I am talking about old stuff. Nice new material has the sharp contrast between black and white that may allow Bitonal (ok, Black & White) scanning. Maybe. Sometimes. But if you want a high quality image or PDF, go with Grayscale first. Color I reserve for those items in which the color actually represents some important or relevant information.

Yes, I know these are going be big file sizes. I adhere to the principal of more is better. I can always reduce the PDF size later on or alter the image DPI or physical dimensions in Photoshop Elements or Graphic Converter (good Mac software). Hard disk space is really cheap now, DVD blanks are cheap so don't skimp on the 'master' scanned image.

A final word on DPI and physical dimensions. DPI, or PPI (depending on what industry you are working in and what jargon you are using) has to do with how much information is squished into an inch of monitor screen real estate. The higher the DPI or PPI, the more detail will be stored in that little inch. So why is your 300 DPI/PPI image opening up to monster size when you view it on your computer monitor? Because that DPI/PPI is related to the resolution of your particular monitor and operating system. This has nothing to do with what you and I think of as the physical size of the original object. It's sort of like Terry Pratchett's Discworld. What you think you see is not what you are really seeing.

Trick: If your scanning software will allow it, set the DPI of your choice and then set the physical dimensions of the original item. The resulting image will be jam packed with image data and will display at the set physical dimensions you specified. At least on a Mac it will. On Windows it's anyones guess.

In the next post I'll discuss Post-Scan processing of old photographs and paper

Till next, Gary

Adobe High Level Risk Notice

Folks

Just in case you haven't heard, there is a very high risk security problem with Adobe Reader and Acrobat for all platforms. Adobe has rushed out the Reader 9.1 update as well as a patch for Acrobat 9:

http://www.adobe.com/support/security/bulletins/apsb09-03.html

Consider this a Public Service announcement on behalf of an enthusiastic Acrobat user.

Till next, Gary

The Chronicle Has Landed

Yes, The Chronicle of The Early American Industries Association DVD is now available through both online and regular old order form.  Buy a copy for yourself, for your friends, for your local Public Library, for your kids school, for your favorite college or university.

Toby Hall, Director of the EAIA, had the foresight to champion the creation of this DVD. Here, as fully searchable and bookmarked PDF documents, is the full run of The Chronicle from 1933 through 2008. Yes, the latest volume is included on the DVD.

Best viewed in Adobe Reader 8 or 9, you'll be able to Fast Search the entire DVD from one search window, or Fast Search individual volumes as needed. The most current print index of The Chronicle is provided as well as a fully bookmarked Home Page to make navigating the DVD fast and easy.

If you're wondering how to order a copy or copies, here is the answer:

Until Jane returns from her sojurn to Colonial Williamsburg and can update the EAIA website, you can order The Chronicle of the Early American Industries Association DVD from The Toolemera Press website. Other than more web traffic, I am not making a farthing. I just like seeing my name in print.

The Chronicle of The Early American Industries Association DVD

Till next
Gary

Moxon v Felibien: The Tale of the Two Plows

There has been discussion in various corners of the internet, yea the omnipresent blogsphere even, examining the relationship between Joseph Moxon's presentation of the Plow plane as opposed to the Plow Plane offered by Msr. Felibiien's earlier work on the Principle of Architecture.

So let's start class by taking a look at the two warring plates, Mr. Moxon on the Left and Mr. Felibien on the Right:

Now, look carefully at the planes as depicted in these two plates. Do you see? The Moxon images are facing to the left. The Felibien images of the same planes are facing to the right.

What can this mean? I have a very simple theory as to what happened and why this has bedeviled us for centuries. Remember first that Moxon was not a member of the Guild that controlled printing. He was first and foremost a Publisher. In fact, some of his books note that they were 'printed for Jospeph Moxon". We can infer that Moxon had to outsource the work that he planned on publishing. Not having ready access to overseas contractual labor, he may have engaged the skills of a newly minted journeyman engraver. And what did journeymen engravers do? The learned how to slavishly copy an existing image, or engraving, to be used in further editions of a given book. Plates underwent considerable wear and tear during the printing process. Periodically, new plates had to b engraved. The journeyman engraver was a skilled artisan in recreating an existing plate such that the viewer could not tell the difference.

But... in this case, I think the engraver was less than skilled, less than attentive, or to fond of his Ale. The Plow Plane, Jointer, Fore, Smooth and Rabbet planes are all pointing in opposite directions on each plate. Let's say the engraver was given an engraved print to copy. Too drunk to think clearly, the engraver faithfully copies the images, all the while forgetting that the images must be engraved in reverse in order to match the originals!

And so, we have a possible answer to why the Moxon tool engravings seem suitable for the dexter amongst us.

I am trying to set up an interview with Mr. Joseph Moxon so that we may settle questions such as this one. If anyone has particular questions that have been bugging them for the past 300 years, please let me know and I will do my best to bring them to Mr. Moxon's attention.

Till next, Gary