For the ambitious carvers amongst us, I've stumbled across what looks like a
fantastic resource for premodern artwork:

http://gallery.euroweb.hu

"The Web Gallery of Art" has over 11,000 digital images of moderate
resolution (100-200k file sizes--some smaller image sizes (2x3) at 300 dpi,
others fairly large image size (7x10 or so) at lower resolution). I've had
some frustration trying to work with small, low-res files off the web, and
these provide more detail than a stamp carver could possibly need.

Plus, it's just a cool tool to explore if you like art! Check out the
collection of illuminated manuscripts under the "gothic collection" if you
like that sort of thing.

Finally, a cool photoshop technique that I haven't seen mentioned on the
various web guides to making stamp images with Photoshop:

Convert the image to grayscale and then experiment with the "cutout" filter
(under "artistic" in photoshop 7.0). This gives sharper edges and less
"pointilature" than the "stamp" filter. Set the number of levels to two and
you'll get only black and white. "Edge simplicity" will increase or decrease
the level of detail. If you loose detail to too much dark or too much light:
undo the filter, raise or lower the brightness, then redo the filter.

Manually adjusting the size and/or resolution of the image will also affect
the amount of detail you get when filtering. In my experience, it works well
to resize the image larger than your final stamp size, run the filter, and
then resize it back down to the size of the stamp you want.

I'll see if I can't find someplace to stick up a few examples of these and
other "Phun with Photoshop" experiments on the web somewhere next week.

La Chola Muy Moderna