Digital Scrapbooking

Scrapbooking has become a popular hobby for many people across the US. We bring it up so you might understand what your clients might be doing with your portrait and family images.

There are many individuals that take their digital pictures print them, and then put them into scrapbooks to preserve their memories. This is an expensive hobby and it takes a lot of time to create layouts. So what would be an alternative technique for this process? In the last year or so a new idea has come into play, digital scrapbooking or also known as computer scrapbooking.

One might ask what are the benefits to scrapbooking digitally rather then the tradition way? There are many benefits to think about. One big benefit is space. Tradition scrapbooking takes up a lot of room. There are several friends that I have that have taken a spare bedroom and tuned it into their scrapbooking room because of the space that their materials take up. By using computer scrapbooking, instead of a spare room one might need to have a spare hard drive. There are several programs out of the market currently that help one create a digital template that they can drag and drop their digital photos, add graphics, enhance a font and one page of your book is done. No more cutting or gluing. Another advantage to using computer scrapbooking program is you can enhance and correct photos. You can lighten or darken a photo, take out red eye, or erase a crease from a photo that has been scanned. Make a black and white photo. This is hard to do with a traditional paper photo! If there is layouts that you don’t like you don’t have to waste the materials that you have already used, you can simply erase the file and start again. One big advantage to doing computer scrapbooking is you can share your pages with friends and family online! You can choose to leave your layouts in digital form or you can print them off and put them in your book.

So one might ask, what do I need to start?

Many people who scrapbook the tradition way already have a digital camera and computer. An individual might think also of investing in a scanner to scan in old photos, and make corrections to these photos. There are very basic programs on the market who offer a variety of features such as graphics, scrapbook templates, and great fonts. A couple of these are Foto Finish Suite and Ulead® Photo Express™ My Scrapbook 2 .

According to one review I read Foto Finish Suite is “best because it gives you a wide range of free printable scrapbooking layouts, as well as examples of theme pages to give you scrap book ideas, flexible printing options, easy drag and drop abilities, a "touch-up wizard" that walks you through enhancing your images, a huge selection of cute scrapbooking clipart, free tutorials and excellent customer service.”

According to Ulead’s website, Ulead® Photo Express™ My Scrapbook 2 offers everything you need to create scrapbook pages, background paper, clip art and titles on your computer. Customize and print a variety of scrapbook-themed pages and background paper to 8.5"x11" or 12"x12" format. Improve not-so-great photos with commonly used photo-editing tools. It's your complete scrapbooking software.

Another helpful hint I found is a couple of websites that have a lot of information about computer scrapbooking, forums that you can join, and reviews on software.

www.computerscrapbooking.com
www.scrapbookjunction.com/
www.coolclipart.com

Technorati Tags : Digtial Scapbooking | software |