The article Stamp Collecting Freeware appears on the Teen Hobbies web site.
The Internet technology may even actually be a good thing to for the stamp collector. It may be a good way to meet people who share the same interests. It may even bring stamp collectors together.
The Teen Hobbies web site presents the article 8 Reasons Why Collectors Need Free Stamp Collecting Software.
However, with the advent of the Internet, things had definitely been easier for stamp collectors. With the arrival of stamp collection software programs made available for downloads, organizing stamps had never been so easy.
The Stamp Collecting Blog has an interesting article on inventory software solutions for philatelists.
I want my inventory program to provide a (preferrably visual) list of (all) issued stamps with basic set of details – leaving me only with the task of selecting what I have or don’t have and providing additional details. It would be also great if I could use any of the major catalogue systems for numbering. Sounds like a GREAT product, but…
Albert W. Starkweather, Philatelic Communicator
In his article on digital references and studies, Francis Adams discusses useful software tools — optical character recognition (OCR) (ReadIris Pro OCR Software) and photo editing. There are great pieces of software available for both Macintosh and Windows computers, one free, that should satisfy the photo editing needs.
Olympus Master 2
Although Francis Adams is a proponent of Adobe Photoshop Elements and I rely solely on Adobe Photoshop CS3 Extended, there are alternatives. One of my favorites is Olympus Master 2, which is bundled with Olympus Digital Cameras and is available as a free download (www.olympusamerica.com). The program allows anyone, regardless of the camera or scanner they own, to view, organize, edit, create, share, and print digital images.
Although I normally would turn up my nose at such a program and had discarded earlier versions with previous Olympus cameras I have owned, I rediscovered Master 2 when a friend asked me to research Photoshop alternatives for a photo seminar he was preparing.
Olympus Master 2
Master 2’s editing palette offers resize, crop, insert text, brightness & contrast, color balance, tone curve, gamma, auto tone correction, hue & saturation, monochrome & sepia, sharpness & blur, distortion correction, and red-eye reduction. All of these steps display the original image side-by-side with the unsaved output. This is particularly useful to less experienced users who get visual confirmation of they changes they are making.
The program is well documented and its animated help guide is particularly useful.
This is not a program for those who wish to create complex photo compositions or work on images needing a great deal of correction. However, for the quality of images being produced by today’s digital cameras and scanners (Choosing a Scanner), Master 2 is perfect for producing print and on screen images.
Although Olympus also offers Olympus Studio 2, which offers more extensive image management, for $100, Photoshop Elements 6 at well below $100 is a far better deal. 
Albert W. Starkweather, Philatelic Communicator
In his articles on digital references and studies, Francis Adams discusses useful software tools — optical character recognition (OCR) and photo editing. There are great pieces of software available for both Macintosh and Windows computers, one moderately priced, that should satisfy your OCR needs.
ReadIris Pro for OCR
Unless one is a master typist or has access to one, optical character recognition is the alternative to converting printed documents into editable text. Most scanners come with some bundled version of OCR software; most is inferior. When Xerox TextBridge Pro was no longer developed for Macintosh, I tested several programs and finally settled on ReadIris Pro 11 (www.irislink.com) because of its ease of use, reliability, and competitive pricing.
ReadIris works seamlessly with my scanner and Microsoft Word, handling most good source material automatically. Good means printed text that is printed in black on a white background in a traditional font, such as Times. Gray or colored type and that on non-white backgrounds works less successfully, as does sans serif or extremely stylized fonts.
Read Iris window
Setting up the software is extremely easy, mostly involving selecting your scanner and target application from drop-down lists — an Epson Perfection scanner and MS Word in my case. Converting a document involves turning on the scanner, placing a document on its bed, and clicking acquire on the ReadIris screen. The document is then scanned, recognized, and then copied and pasted into the word processing program. With good source material accuracy is nearly 100 percent.
There is a more interactive approach to problematical material, which allows the user to define areas to be scanned, to train recognition of characters the program does not recognize, and to set other customized options. The automated process takes only seconds, while the interactive method may take up to several minutes, depending on the number of characters that are not recognized. Similar documents will be processed much more quickly once training information is saved.
No matter which approach is used, it is very important to proofread carefully once the text is imported.
Street price is about $110, a whopping $390 less than its leading competitor, OmniPage Pro 16.
