Websites we find the most helpful.

[Bill Burgess]

I would like to see which websites we have found the most useful.
I am also curious as to how many of us are presently using certain sites.

I do not know that many sites, so I will count of many of you guys to help me name some.

In a day or so, I will put up the customary poll, after we list some sites.

[Bill Burgess]

Off the top of my head, here are some websites that I have found extremely helpful and useful. I use some of them almost daily.

1. Baseball-Fever
2. Baseball-Reference
3. Sporting News archives (via World Vital Records.com)
4. Proquest (via Mid-Continent Public Library)
5. ancestry.com
6. baseball-almanac
7. Photobucket.com
8. Retrosheet
9. Baseball Think Factory
10. pbwiki.com (pbworks.com)
11. The Deadball Era
12. SABR
13. The National Baseball Hall of Fame and Museum
14. World Vital Records.com
15. The Sporting News website
16. Baseball Digest

[ChiSox1917]

When writing my blog posts I usually do not stray far from my core of useful sites:
- Baseball-Reference
- Baseball Fever
- SABR
- Baseball Digest on Google Books

And obviously certain books in my library and such.

[JDD]

You have hit most of the popular ones, the truly useful ones too.

Try this one... they have really improved there stats on former players:

www.fangraphs.com

Their blogs are just ok. Their sortable stats are good and getting better. Click on Leaders then Career for the sabermetrics. You can even sort by position in the similar fashion provided by Lee Sinins' Sabermetric Encyclopedia.

[Honus Wagner Rules]

Originally Posted by Bill Burgess

Just added the poll. Might I persuade you register your votes?

Bill, I don't think you have enough options in the poll. And I voted in the poll.

[Bill Burgess]

Originally Posted by Honus Wagner Rules

Bill, I don't think you have enough options in the poll. And I voted in the poll.

What can I say? I am a polling kind of guy. In my supremely humble opinion.

You can think of me as one cool poll-cat.

[Bill Burgess]

Originally Posted by Honus Wagner Rules

And I voted in the poll.

And you lived to tell of it??

What if someone had walked in on you and caught you?

What would you have said? How would you have explained yourself??

Thank God your wife didn't catch you. You would have had to LIVE WITH IT.

[BSmile]

Alright Bill, I voted.
You might want to consider adding Flickr.com as a photo-uploading site.

[RuthMayBond]

How are we defining "often"?

[dgarza]

Bill, what is the relevance of Photoshop here? I'm curious...

[RuthMayBond]

Originally Posted by dgarza

Bill, what is the relevance of Photoshop here? I'm curious...

Bill enhances old baseball photos

[BSmile]

Originally Posted by RuthMayBond

Bill enhances old baseball photos

As do I...in a big way.

[dgarza]

Originally Posted by BSmile

As do I...in a big way.

What do you mean by a "big way"?

[dgarza]

Originally Posted by RuthMayBond

Bill enhances old baseball photos

True, although Photoshop is not a website.

If talking software and applications, I'll add that I use Excel up the wazzoo.

[RuthMayBond]

Originally Posted by dgarza

What do you mean by a "big way"?

Just this li'l ...

http://www.baseball-fever.com/showthread.php?t=75607

[BSmile]

Originally Posted by dgarza

What do you mean by a "big way"?

I didn't mean to "toot my own horn", so to speak. I just meant that the photos that I post here at BBF are all edited to some degree.

[Honus Wagner Rules]

Originally Posted by RuthMayBond

Bill enhances old baseball photos

Yes, Bill makes the player's faces orange and he calls it "colorizing".

[RuthMayBond]

Originally Posted by BSmile

I didn't mean to "toot my own horn", so to speak. I just meant that the photos that I post here at BBF are all edited to some degree.

But I'm pretty sure Burgess is the original photographer on those 19th century pics

[dgarza]

Originally Posted by BSmile

I didn't mean to "toot my own horn", so to speak. I just meant that the photos that I post here at BBF are all edited to some degree.

I didn't mean to suggest that you were over-blowing your work. I was just wondering how much time and effort you used using Photoshop. Some people say they Photoshop something and all they do is crop and or stick in Elvis. But it looks like your Photoshopped images are seamless and subtle, looking like you never even altered anything, which show you spent so time on them and/or know know what you're doing.

[BSmile]

Originally Posted by dgarza

I didn't mean to suggest that you were over-blowing your work. I was just wondering how much time and effort you used using Photoshop. Some people say they Photoshop something and all they do is crop and or stick in Elvis. But it looks like your Photoshopped images are seamless and subtle, looking like you never even altered anything, which show you spent so time on them and/or know know what you're doing.

Thanx dgarza. Some of the images (especially the really large panoramics) took many hours to edit. In general, I try to make an image look as good as it can (within reason) rather than altering it greatly. Essentially that means sharpening, scratch/wrinkle/dust removal, color correction, brightness/contrast correction etc. Also, to be fair...I use several image editing programs, not just Photoshop.

[Bill Burgess]

Originally Posted by RuthMayBond

How are we defining "often"?

I used that word because it would have taken a LOT of room to give options like,

1. Once a week
2. 1-3 times a week
3. several times a month
4. Once a month
5. Every several months.

Imagine having to wade through that for 20 websites?

So, I used my common sense and allowed each one of us to interpret 'often' as we choose to individually. Does that make any sense to you, Jeff? Am I making correct judgments as to phrase these polls? Hope so.

[Bill Burgess]

Originally Posted by dgarza

Bill, what is the relevance of Photoshop here? I'm curious...

Of course I'm aware that Photoshop is not a website but a program offered by Adobe to work on and process photographs and images.

But, in this survey, I was curious as to how many members are adept at it, to what degree and how many are not familiar with it at all.

It took me a long time to learn it. Randy (Sultan_1895-1948) taught it to me, in two long telephone calls. I was really frustrated. Randy was my technician in the Historical, Archival Photographs, until he taught me to be my own wingman. He was unbelievably patient with me.

This felt like as good a place to throw that in as any. I also could have included who had Excell, a program offered by Microsoft.

[Bill Burgess]

Originally Posted by Honus Wagner Rules

Yes, Bill makes the player's faces orange and he calls it "colorizing".

While it is true that my initial efforts did result in orange, sunburnt faces, I also spent a long time going back and trying to correct that.

My faces, for the most part are much better now. I asked if someone could teach me how to tint faces, but no one stepped up.

So, I'm on my own and teaching myself Photoshop skills without a mentor to give me tutorials.

[Bill Burgess]

Originally Posted by BSmile

In general, I try to make an image look as good as it can (within reason) rather than altering it greatly.

The key to good photo-editing is to not give the viewer a reason to suspect altering.

If an image appears that it has been worked on, that is not good photoshopping. The goal is to make it look normal, natural and unaltered.

I also try to achieve this result, but I am far from the master that BSmile is. He is da Man. He should be in that field and making big bucks. In my supremely humble opinion.

[RuthMayBond]

Originally Posted by Bill Burgess

I used that word because it would have taken a LOT of room to give options like,

1. Once a week
2. 1-3 times a week
3. several times a month
4. Once a month
5. Every several months.

Imagine having to wade through that for 20 websites?

So, I used my common sense and allowed each one of us to interpret 'often' as we choose to individually. Does that make any sense to you, Jeff? Am I making correct judgments as to phrase these polls? Hope so.

1) You're all good
2) I voted
3) You have more "polls" than Warsaw