Thank you for reading! This is basically a continuation of the first post (“An Issue Keeps “Cropping Up”). My background again-- New CLZ user! About 3500 comics of which about 1/3 are Silver Age and 2/3 Bronze Age, from 1961 to 1979. Almost no modern comics. Grades average between VG-VF for most. I wanted to take custom photos of each but realized pretty quickly that it would take forever to do so. And CLZ said, “WHY?!” They have such nice stock photos that are bright and accurate and pretty damn great. Why not use them??! But, I guess I’m “that guy” that desires custom photos since my collection is older and hardly in the 8.5-9.8 range that many modern comics are (where a stock photo is great!) Again, I just thought it would be cool to have an actual accounting of my collection. A true archive. There’s something really satisfying to see their actual condition and appearance as you go through your collection, when they’re not all perfect but are still in pretty great shape, many of them. But, here’s the rub…
To take a custom photo, you have to go back into the site and edit a particular comic. In my case, I was doing it right after I scanned the comic and the info came in from the Core (a ridiculously cool tool, as we all know, and why I’m addicted to CLZ). But after the stock photo was loaded, I’d have to go back out to the list of my comics, reselect the comic I was just in, hit the Edit button, scroll the top over to “Covers”, hit the camera icon to take the photo of the comic I’d just scanned a second ago, use the cropping tool to right-size it (with the issue discussed in the previous post), save it, scan the next comic and repeat the process. It was a bit clunky in terms of efficiency, but still a super tool to be able to load a custom photo. The current system is really designed more for those special comics- key issues, slabs, 9.6’s and above, etc. NOT the whole collection like crazy-brains here wants to do. In any case, I made the following suggestion to Alwin at CLZ…
What if, right after you scan a comic and the correct info is loaded (including the stock photo), a button was available that said “Load Custom Photo Instead” or something like that. When you selected it, the camera icon appeared like when you’re editing and allowed you to take a photo of the comic you just scanned a second ago. The cropping tool would also be available (just like when you edit normally), and once all good, you could accept it and Presto! Custom photo. It would save several steps and streamline an already great tool. But… Alwin pointed out that nobody has asked for this! (Besides me, of course!) and that people asked for a lot of other things that CLZ has worked on and incorporated into the app to keep making it better. But they also said to throw it out and see if anyone else thinks this would be a great option. I thought more might try custom photos in general if it was so readily available right after scanning. I don’t think anyone would hate it. Some might really love it. I just saw it as another feather in CLZ’s cap as they continued to make their app more and more user-friendly and capable. Really untouchable. So, here’s the second question… (first was in previous mentioned post.)
Question 2- Would anyone like to have the option to readily save a custom photo(s) of a comic right after you scanned it, thus getting it into your archive right then while the comic is still in front of you? Again, it’s just a tool to have and you could still create custom photos after the fact as you do now (you slab a comic later, for instance). If you think this might be cool, please let CLZ know. Like the jump with the cropping tool, I’m the only person that has asked about this so far. I’m weird, I know. But what the hell..
Folks, if you’ve made it this far, THANKS! Sorry for the long first and second posts… my first on the CLZ forum! But I very much appreciate having the perspective and expertise of others who’ve used CLZ for a while, and look forward to any feedback.
MUCH OBLIGED!