I think this is the first time I've posted an auction here, but I especially liked the way this one turned out, so....

http://cgi.ebay.com/Old-Advertising-Folding-Book-Rack-Lorings-San-Diego_W0QQitemZ140039297747

I created a template just for this one item, so I could insert a photo from a postcard, and I added a wide black border to the bottom of the center image (whether it's in the center or not depends on the viewer's monitor size and settings, I suppose), so that it appears aligned with the other two pictures (otherwise, the lower edges of the images would be aligned -- you could do this with any color background; would just have to identify the color's HTML ID number and match it in your image editing program). I think you can do similar things by using frames, but I'm not familiar with those techniques. Not that any of this really enhances the chance an item will sell, but it's kinda fun to play with the possibilities, ya know?

Anyway, I visited this book store a few times many decades ago (not quite as long ago as when the parade took place -- I'm not THAT old). I think the building is still there, but Loring's is out of business.

Sue

Sue,

That looks really good! I like that. And I like the bookstand too

Judy/blue

Thanks Judy!

Sue,

You are so creative. You and your listing templates. Always coming up with new ways to make your listings looks so fine!

Judy/blue

My kids think I'm nuts to spend time on the look of an auction I'm starting at 99 cents, but it's not much trouble to play with AW templates when I'm sitting here with the tv on one side and a bag of Reeses Peanut Butter Cups on the other. If we can compose auctions at the same time as we are doing the usual evening leisure activities, why not use colors and other embellishments. It makes a mundane chore more interesting.

Thanks again for your kind comments, Sue

Sue,

Reeses Peanut Butter cups!! YUMMMY!! I love those things but I can't have them. No wonder you like to change your templates around. TV and Reeses.

Judy/blue

Sue:
KEWL! I like the page you did. It looks great and bet you had fun doing it. I use a black background a lot of the time because the images stand out so well on black.

I looked at some of the other auctions you have and found that you put a lot of though and work into each page. I think that be buyer notices it also. You really have been creative with AW2K. Congrats!

By the way I wondered why I didn't remember seeing you at the parade - I was driving the flower car. Well not really but at times I feel as if I could have been.

Garry

Oohhhhhhhhhh Reeses. Have you tried matching the wrapper color for a background. Might make bidders so hungry they bid. :D

Garry

BTW have you ever tried or used "Colorcop" it is a great free color matching program.

Garry,

Where do I find "Colorcop"???????? I need help with color. My mom can look at a rug or curtains, go all the way across town and match the stinking things perfectly. I did not, however, inherit that ability. I did get my dad's slimmness, work horseness, and dark features

Judy/blue

Hi Judy:

Colorcop is great. It's a small program that you run and it will stay ON TOP of all of the windows - or you can minimize it and get it out of the way. The program has an eyedropper that will go anywhere on your desktop and tell you the rgb or cmyk color mix and it has a magnifying glass to get in deeper to a region to match a tiny spot. Once it tells you the RGB or CMYK color mix you type that into the program you are using and you're ready to go.

Color Cop Website:
http://www.datastic.com/tools/colorcop/

Color Cop Download: http://www.datastic.com/tools/colorcop.zip

I stumbled on it a long time ago and use it quite frequently when designing First Day Cover Cachets. However, it has tons of usage. Now if you scan in the rug ......

Garry

Garry,

THANK YOU!!! This is wonderful!! Trying to match colors is a real challenge for me and mom doesn't live that close. So I can't just run by her house and say "Mom, match this up, okay??"

Judy/blue

Judy
Mom should move closer right? Also are you so lucky that mom can match in cmyk or rgb? LOL I used to work with a guy that had worked around color so long that he could color match on press in under 5 minutes. He was a marvel ... did it all by eye and talent and memory. When I did press OK's with him it was so easy because he could get the color match done quickly and then there was just fine tuning. When I was working with some of the others it would take a minimum of 5 times longer and often much longer to achieve the same result. I used to beg to work with that man as he made life a lot easier.

My eye for color isn't bad at all but he made me feel like a novice that would never progress forward. Some people such as your mom have an inate ability to do that with color. They can look at it one time and remember it for as long as they wish. Then as if they have some sort of picture album in their brain they can take it away and make room for more. It is an amazing ability. For most of us yellow becomes the hardest color to distinguish as we age however people who have that ability seem never to lose the yellow perception. Amazing.

Garry

Garry,

My Mom can literally recall the exact shades of any color and match it perfectly without having a swatch in her hand. And she has an incredible eye for decorating. So much so that one of the high end custom interior decorating companies in a nearby town pursued her for years trying to get her to work for them. She never did it. I wish she would have. She is very talented.

Well, I am the one that moved away--first. Then my folks bought a larger ranch further east of where I grew up and they moved. It isn't that far. About 1 hours. It just seems so far when I use to live less than 1/4 mile away.

I did not get 1 ounce of the interior decorator, color stuff from mom. Nada! My sisters on the other hand. It isn't fair. One is an artist deluxe. Wood carving, painting, drawing. The other has my mom's same eye for color and the same ability to decorate. Then---there is me. Bummer!

Judy/blue

Judy:
That may well be true ... yet from your mom to your sisters which of them can:

1. locate and negotiate for a liquidation of 9850 Orange & Purple Easter Bunnies imprinted EATHER
2. List them with AW2K
3. Sell them all in 3 weeks
4. Make a profit?
5 Get fantastic feedback with no returns.

Hmmmmmmm?

LOL

Garry

Garry,

Well now that is true. My mom can't even turn on the computer. Dad does it for her, starts Word so mom can type. Then he does the printing for her. She never has figured out how to do email or IM so I can't talk to her unless I call.

And mom would get hung up on the fact "easter" is misspelled

Judy/blue

Thanks Garry!

Yeah, black background are my favorite. Just wish I could find a black photo-taking background that would blend perfectly with the digital black. I've tried various fabrics (my camera picks up EVERY speck of lint and then I spend too much time cloning them out of the image), and all the paper backgrounds I've tried, no matter how matte they appear to my eyes, apparently have enough reflectivity to bounce light back and make them photograph as grayish or silverish. And this is just with natural light. Anyone have a great, totally nonreflective, lint-free, black photo background they use?

So that was you at the parade, huh? LOL. I wish downtown looked the same as it did back then. Love the old, old buildings that remain.

Sue

Thank you so much for telling me about Color Cop. It's the exact thing I needed! Just have to drag the eyedropper into the image. How perfect is that?!!! I wish I'd had it when I spent an hour matching the background of my eBay Store logo to the green I'd selected as my stock Store background. Every time I wanted to check the result of tweaking the color a little, I'd have to upload the little logo again and take a peek. Nope, a little too yellow or a bit too blue. I tried to identify the color by looking at the source code of the Store page, but I couldn't find it. Color Cop coulda save me a LOT of time! And by the way, I didn't do too badly just by eye. According to Color Cop, the stock green is 216, 225, 204, and my logo is 214, 226, 206. I could see it was still off just a bit, but I didn't want to mess with it any more. Now if I could just run the .exe file for Color Cop inside my brain.....

I plan to make a donation to the developer today.

Thanks again, Sue

Sue:
There are a few easy ways to get the black background in your photos. You can go to an art supply store and get black rolled paper. It is black all the way through, not just covered on front and back so when you tear it there is black showing. This is important because if you cut it you don't want a white edge showing (one way though is to use a black magic marker to cover up the cut or tear). Also try Photo Supply stores - such as a place that sells a LOT of cameras and specialty films - they cater to semi-pro and pro photographers. They carry a matte black totally non-reflective paper and also a matte black fabric that is used for a drape and it too is not reflective. Also remember - if you roll the paper/material into about a 5 to 8 inch cone it will help a lot in stoping reflections and if you are photographing glassware it will help define the edges of the glassware and show off the cut glass designs if any are present. The two rolled pieces would of course be just out of the photo or cropped out later. and if you are shooting north to south the rolls would be going in the oposite direction - east and west. And just the opposite for the other way. Actually there is no other way but you get what I mean. Sometimes it does help having the rolls going in the non conventional direction - that can be found by trial and error with a particular item.

The other way to go is check with a local Junior College or College where you live and speak with someone in the photography dept. They may even give you some materials to use.

Finally if there is a large newspaper or magazine in your area. Check with them - the art/advertising or Production dept. Many do the photo shoots for their advertising clients and they too would have the proper material. When I was working we used to have tons of that stuff to photograph all kinds of items. It comes in reds and blues and blacks, yellows, greens and a rainbow of other colors.

Kodak used to be the major marketer of this type of product however there are several others doing it today. And if you are doing digital photography the material you need is the same as film photography - it's the lighting and flash that cause the nasty reflections. Oh, and for those nasty white lint marks - canned air works ever so much better than picking it off the fabric.

One final tip - if you know anyone at your local newspaper and they still use sheet film - ask them for the protective boards that are packed in the box with the film. It is great for a rigid black background. In fact I have some that is a permanent part of my scanner. The white backing on the scanner top is now black because I applied one of those boards to it. It has no reflectance also when scanning.

Hope this helped, if not let me know and I'll dig deeper into the recesses and see what product info I can come up with.

Garry

Wow - you and Judy's mom are pretty good. Your choice by eye was darned good in fact most people prolly won't notice the difference. You'll learn to love color cop it has a lot of uses and makes doing some stuff so fast.

Garry

Hi,

My oh my. Take an afternoon to go horse back riding and see what I missed.

Garry, I also want to thank you for sharing color cop. I used it to find that I, unlike Sue or my mom, had not come very close to the right shade of blue. But it is now corrected Thanks to Garry sharing color cop. And I have some more work to do with this cool little tool.

Judy/blue

I just used Color Cop to match the background color of my current wallpaper (desktop background as Windows calls it these days) to one of my many digital post-it notes so that it nearly disappears (only the text shows). So cool! So silly that I care! LOL. Have real work to do.......

Sue

Sue,

I'm with ya girl! I am lovin this color cop thing. I like things to match but I just can't do it without help. Now that I have help, I am going to be a match makin nut!

Judy/blue

Judy:
You're more than welcome. I found ColorCop quite a while ago and it has been living on my computer ever since and often it gets daily use. I've found it a invaluable tool and it has made the old way of color picking no longer necessary. What was a 15 to 20 minute labor to match one color is now done in 2 seconds.

So now you have the right color of judyblue.

Welcome back from your afternoon off. Hope you enjoyed the horse back riding. Sounds as if it was a fun time.

Garry

Sue:

It's not that it is silly, or anything. It's a simple matter of "I can do it !!"

Ain't teknologie fun

Garry

Garry,

I did, I did enjoy my ride. My best friend had a knee replacement several months ago. And she is my horse back riding buddy too. She is just now getting where she can ride for more than 20 minutes at a time. So today she took out a new horse she is thinking about buying. And I took out my older horse and ponied the colt I am breaking.

And yes I can have the right Judy/blue color

Judy/blue

Garry,

You are so kind to give me all these tips! I will definitely try to find some of this paper. I plan to call photo stores tomorrow. And I love all the possible sources for freebies (maybe I should be haunting the dumpsters behind the photo stores -- I'm a devoted dumpster diver already!). Also, I use canned air for picture-framing -- never occurred to me to have a can handy when I'm photographing.

Thanks again, Sue

Sue,

I wish you lived closer to me. I would happily give you some paper. Right now, I have rolls of Kraft paper in the too heavy to lift kind of rolls. The schools use them a lot. And we use them for our pictures as well. Works out pretty good.

Judy/blue

Sue:
You're welcome. You'll be surprised how easy it is to get rid of the lint with the canned air. Also if you find the paper you'll be very happy with how it enhances the details on glassware. Don't dive too deeply into those dumpsters - sometimes people have been known to not be able to climb out.

Garry

Thanks (even though you're too far away, it's the offer that counts).

I have loads of papers and mat boards, but even the most matte-appearing surfaces will bounce light when photographed in bright natural lighting (not direct sun). I think I need to find one of the surfaces Garry talks about -- something intended for photographers' use. Even the velvet board I have (it's for picture mats) will look silver in a photo depending on the camera angle. Just need to spend some time searching and experimenting. Will report back......

Sue

Heh heh! I made a "dive stick" -- a length of 1 x 1 wood with a screw-hook in the end. Very handy for snagging stuff from store dumpsters. Businesses toss out the most amazing things! It's an absolute crime what they throw away. Since I discovered the Staples dumpster, it'll be a long time before I need to buy printer paper again. I think their copy center grabs a ream off the shelf when they run out of some special paper for some print job, and then they just toss out the remainder. I love trash!

Sue (not a bag lady; no where near, in fact; having financial resources and being frugal are not mutually exclusive, but I suppose eBay sellers in general already know that)

sue,

You and I would just be a great team.. I use to dumpster dive all of the time. Embrass my kids to death because I would take them with me and make them help me. I would go behind the local fabric store and get all the fabric boards. Take them to work so we could bolt the monster roll on tube fabric we received. And the stuff you get from places like Famous Barr, etc.

Staples, huh. Maybe I better go check out Office Max and Office depot after work tomorrow. And I wonder what's in Best Buys dumpster

Judy/blue