Category: Object Collection

Object Collection: Hawaii Vacation Artifacts

18 years ago, I went on a Hawaiin cruise with Ashley, and would you believe I still have some scans of memories from that trip I have yet to do anything with? I’d originally planned on doing a vacation book, but after 18 years I think it’s time I admit that project isn’t going to happen any time soon. 😂

What I did find though are two files that I scanned and meant to share as part of my Object Collection. They are one side of a Maui Trade Dollar (why didn’t I scan the other side? No idea.) And one ship room key.

Be sure to check out the whole Object Collection category to find more scanned objects. These objects are free for personal use, but commercial use is prohibited without permission. Please see my Creative Commons License for further usage details.

Object Collection: Blank 3.5″ Floppy Disk

It’s been nine years (wow!) since I last contributed something to my Object Collection project, so this is a fun one. I was scanning photos and documents for my 20 year college reunion (which I flew back to Calgary for in October) and among my keepsakes was a 3.5″ floppy disk I used for school projects. I thought it would be fun to remind my classmates about our reliance upon the humble floppy disk in 1998 – and boy did we ever rely on it! I remember more than one student who kept using the same disk from the year before, and when it died and they lost their work they were shocked (I preached the gospel of backups even back then, but no one thinks it will ever happen to them…).

I scanned a 6 megapixel version of the disk, but it had writing on the label. I spent a couple of minutes in Photoshop CC trying to remove the writing but quickly realized it would take me at least 20 minutes of work to get it cleaned up, and I wasn’t confident I could do that good of a job. Here’s what the original looked like – it also had a nasty shadow up top I knew would be a pain to fix.

Continue reading Object Collection: Blank 3.5″ Floppy Disk

Object Collection: Canadian Coins

Canadian-1-Cent-Penny-Heads

Canadian 1 cent (penny) coin heads
[Download high-res version, transparent PNG]

Canadian-1-Cent-Penny-Tails

Canadian 1 cent (penny) coin tails
[Download high-res version, transparent PNG]

Continue reading Object Collection: Canadian Coins

Object Collection: Blank Generic Parking Ticket

small-Generic-Parking-Ticket

Blank generic parking ticket.
[Download high-res version, transparent PNG]

Be sure to check out the whole Object Collection category to find more scanned objects. These objects are free for personal use, but commercial use is prohibited without permission. Please see my Creative Commons License for further usage details.

Object Collection: American Coins

I figured the 4th of July was a good day to publish my collection of American coin objects that I’ve scanned over the past week. All the coins are provided in transparent PNG format. Coins are tricky to scan – the edges on some of these coins aren’t perfect, but they should look good when dropped into a layout. I started these scans at 600dpi but had shifted up to 900dpi at the end where I scanned the $1 coin – I’ll be using 900dpi from now on for small object scanning. Enjoy!

American-$1-Coin-Front

US $1 dollar coin front
[Download high-res version, transparent PNG]

Continue reading Object Collection: American Coins

Object Collection: Mexican Peso Coins

small-Mexican-5-Pesos-Front

Mexican $5 peso coin front
[Download high-res version, transparent PNG]

Continue reading Object Collection: Mexican Peso Coins

Object Collection: Blank British Airways Boarding Pass

I happened to find an old British Airways boarding pass when I was going through some papers, so for my first official contribution to the newly created Object Collection category, I scanned it, cloned out portions of the text, and here you go:

small-british-airways-blank-boarding-passClick on the image above for the high-resolution version (4000 x 1637, 1.75 MB).

I also created a lower resolution PNG file that has a transparent background, good for using in a scrapbook layout – you can download that here (2000 x 819, 2.8 MB). If you’re looking for another blank boarding pass, check out the Air Canada one.

Be sure to check out the whole Object Collection category to find more scanned objects. These objects are free for personal use, but commercial use is prohibited without permission. Please see my Creative Commons License for further usage details.

The “Object Collection” Category

Back in November of 2006, in the first month I started this site, I scanned an Air Canada boarding pass at a high resolution, edited out all the identification information on it, and posted it on this blog. I did this because I couldn’t find exactly what I was looking for, so I decided to create it and share it with others. Little did I know how popular that blog entry would become, and how many people were looking for exactly the same thing. Over the past 12 months, that one blog entry has gotten 22,868 page views, making it one of the more popular pages on this blog. I estimate that since first posting it in 2006, around 100,000 people have visited that page. The #1 Google search result for the terms “blank boarding pass”, and the #1 Google Images result is that page.

Since I’ve invested some time in improving my green-screen scanning technique, I’ve decided to launch a new category on this blog: the Object Collection category. I toyed with the idea of launching a new blog/site around this effort, but I don’t want to create more work for myself than I have to. The objects I scan will be posted to this blog, with the goal of creating a collection of high-resolution, transparent objects in PNG or JPEG (if transparency isn’t required) format. I’ll likely do them in groups of similar objects, so there shouldn’t be more than one new post every few weeks with objects.

These objects are free for personal use, but commercial use is prohibited without permission. Please see my Creative Commons License for further usage details.

A Blank Boarding Card/Airplane Ticket

One of the purposes that I want this blog to fulfil is to “fill gaps” in the online world. Meaning that if I’m searching for something in Google and can’t find it no matter how hard I try, if I’m able to discover/create it myself, I’ll post about it on this blog . Some of these posts will seem like nonsense to you, but as strange as they might be, I figure that if I’m looking for something, someone else out there is probably doing the same thing.

SMALLgeneric-boarding-pass-airline-ticket-blank-templateClick the image above for the high-resolution version.

The first such instalment is for a personal project: I needed a blank plane ticket or boarding pass that I could customize to use as part of a surprise for some friends, so I went to Google and did some image searching. None were quite right – most were low-resolution, making them impractical for what I needed to do which was layer some text over top and make a print out that looked almost as good as the original. So I fired up my scanner, did a 300 dpi scan of a recent boarding pass from my trip to Thailand, and used a clone brush to delete the elements of text that I wanted to customize. Voila! Took make 15 minutes total, and the results look awesome when cranked out on my colour laser printer (an HP 2600n). Yeah, it says Air Canada on it, but hey, that’s all I had to work with. Someone creative can take the high-res image and slap on a new logo if they feel like it…

2009 UPDATE: Be sure to check out the whole Object Collection category to find more scanned objects that I’ve created. Be sure to check out the whole Object Collection category to find more scanned objects. These objects are free for personal use, but commercial use is prohibited without permission. Please see my Creative Commons License for further usage details. And if you’re looking for another blank airline boarding pass, check out this British Airways blank boarding pass that I scanned.