Digital Scrapbooking

Digital photography is now dominant, with many crafters owning not only a powerful computer but also a photo quality printer. There is no need to get photos developed in a shop when they can easily be printed at home to the size you choose. With so many of us storing digital photos on our computers it makes sense to now bring them from the hard drive to the album. Digital scrapbooking also allows us to scan in images and use them directly on a page either as a background or main feature. This is a huge advantage if the photos are precious or held by another member of the family.

How to Digital Scrapbook

Text

A computer is great for journalling or making titles to a page. By using packages such as Word Art you can make fun titles in different styles and colours.

Photos

Photographs and computers go hand in hand. Even if you are not very computer literate it is easy to get the hang of. If you use a digital camera, simply attach it to your computer using the USB port and lead. If you use a camera with film, you can scan the photographs onto your computer. If you don't have a scanner you can simply ask the film processor to put your pictures onto a CD for a few extra pounds.

Once you have your photos on screen there are a number of ways you can use them. You can keep the traditional scrapbook page by just printing out your digital prints onto photo quality paper. At a basic level you print them out as they appear and then crop the images using a paper trimmer. You can then make as many copies as you will need for your layout and it doesn't matter if you make a mistake as you can just print another copy.

Photo Editing

If you are more confident, then you can edit the images on screen and then print them out ready to use. You will need photo editing software on your computer. This is the type of software that is commonly used to computer scrapbook. Popular brands include Adobe Photoshop Elements®, Photoshop®, InDesign®, Corel Paint Shop Pro® and Microsoft Digital Image Pro® – there are too many to list here.

By using a computer package you will be able to change the size of the photos to any that you want, correct red eye and enhance photos that would previously have been discarded. You can also easily make a whole page by just sitting at your computer.

Once you have completed your computer scrapbooking layout, you can print them out on photographic paper with your printer, send them to a photo processor or have them printed in bound books. You can also email your layouts to anyone and post them in galleries.

Create a Digital Layout

Starting with a blank screen is as daunting as a blank sheet of card was when you first started scrapbooking! But begin from the background and build up. Many packages such as Photoshop® allow you to create 'layers' whereby you overlay each layer but you are able to edit, change or remove a layer at any point.

Then select your photos from your archive and change the proportions as desired. You can easily crop images, rotate and just play around with them to get the most from each photo. Instead of matting you can create borders for the photos or take it further by creating a shadow border. You can also 'adjust' photos by taking out red eye, brushing out something you don't want to be in the background and even removing facial blemishes or making a person thinner!