scrappydoo: June 2009

DIGITAL SCRAPBOOKING

Scrapbooking refers to a method of preserving personal and family memorabilia and photos in an artistic manner. The art of scrapbooking goes back to the Victorian era. Photos would be mounted in albums using photocorners and would include journaling and bits of memorabilia like newspaper clippings, letters, cards....even hair clippings! Modern scrapbooking now incorporates a variety of handmade and manufactured embelishments, making it a multi billion dollar industry.

The advent of scanners, desktop publishing, photo editing programs and advanced printing options has now made it relatively easy to create professional looking layouts in digital form using the home computer.

Digital scrapbooking offers several advantages over paper scrapbooking. Photos can be moved straight from a digital camera onto a layout...no need to print them first. It is easy to correct mistakes or change a design. A few clicks on the keyboard is all it takes. If you have already been bitten by the scrapbooking bug, you are well aware of the amount of time, space, tools and products required to create a traditiional scrapbook page...not to mention the hassle of packing up and cleaning up your work area each time you finish working on a layout. With digital scrapping you no longer need a large work area, nor do you need to pack up supplies. Plus, you can reuse your supplies endlessly. Just think of the money that saves! Digital Scrapbooking is also fast and becomes portable if you are using a laptop which allows you to be creative whenever and where-ever you want!

But...as with anything, there can also be drawbacks to going digital. Because digital files and graphic editing programs can be quite large, going digital requires a computer with a lot a available memory and a fast processor. Graphic editing software can be expensive and may have a high learning curve. Digital layouts are less "tactile" than their paper and glue counterpoints. If you like the physicality of actual artifacts, you may want to consider combining digital elements along with traditional scrapbooking techniques.

Getting Started

If you decide to delve into digital scrapbooking you will need, at minimum, a computer, some digital photos to work with and some kind of graphics editing program. Digital photos and editing programs can create quite large files, and manipulating them can be very demanding on your computer's memory. You will need a computer that is relatively up to date and that has ample RAM and a large hard drive. Make sure your computer's hard drive has at least 10 GB of free space. If you don't have enough room on your computer's hard drive, you may want to save your layouts to an external hard drive. External drives connect to your computer via a USB port and are a relatively inexpensive way to add more storage space to your computer. If you plan to download digital elements (papers, alphabets, tags and other digital goodies) from the internet then you will also need a fast internet connection and the ability to unzip digital files. (EG: WinZip)

You will need some sort of graphics editing program in order to create layouts. There are dozens of graphics editing programs available that allow you to edit photos. There are also specialized programs designed primarily to create digital layouts.The learning curve, features and cost varies from product to product. Fortunately you can find free trials for many of the software programs.

There are also some free online services available that are fast and easy. Smilebox allows you to make scrapbook layouts using ready made templates but you need to register and install their software. Through Smilebox, you can use their basic services to create, edit, publish or print scrapbook layouts. Scrapblog is a free site that does not require you to register or install any software. With Scrapblog, you can create scrapbook layouts from scratch or by using templates. Scrapblog enables you to pull your photos from popular sites such as Flickr, Photobucket and even Facebook or you can upload them from your computer. Once you have finished creating your scrapbook, you can choose to share it on those same social networking sites, email it to your friends, or print it out and put it in an album.

Photo editing programs cost more, but the freedom to learn and create is endless. You will also need to make sure you have some photo editing software for Digital Scrapbooking such as Adobe PSE, Adobe Photoshop Elements 7 or ACDSee. Some manufactures offer free trials for these programs. If you need any help using any of the programs, tutorials are offered on various sites such as The Shabby Shoppe, or Scrapbook-Bytes.