Digi-Scrapping How To's

I've had a few questions about this new obsession of mine---Digital Scrapbooking. So, I'm going to attempt to explain how it works and give some advice on how to get started. But just so you know there are others more qualified and much better at explaining. So you might want to spend some time googling or chatting on a forum with educated people to field your questions.


What is it...
Okay, here we go. Digital Scrapbooking is when you use digital products to create scrapbooking pages on your computer. These pages can be printed out on photo paper and they look amazing, and when you get good at the editing process they look pretty real (not so flat). They can also be e-mailed, blogged, stored in e-books, etc.


Getting Started...
To get started you will need digital pictures either from a digital camera or a scanner. You will also need a photo editing program on your computer. I recommend any version of Photoshop or Photoshop Elements. I believe you can get a free trial download to try out for about 30 days. You will also need some digital scrapbooking supplies. I recommend downloading some freebies to begin with just to make sure you like it before you start plunking down money. Ikeagoddess is my favorite site for free supplies. (These files are huge so make sure you have room on your hard drive before you go downloading like crazy). If you are in this for the long run you will eventually want to get an external hard drive.



You begin by opening your photo's and selected scrapbooking supplies into your editing program. Then you just layer your photo's onto the paper by clicking and dragging. At this point I would recommend going to DigitalScrapbookMemories.com click on their tutorials and go through each tutorial. This is how I learned. If you have problems hop onto their forum and ask questions. There is a bit of a learning curve and your first pages might not look exactly how you like them, but you have to mess around a lot before it gets really easy and fast. DSM does an amazing job of explaining things and their forum is loaded with people that can answer any questions you might have.

Just a Few Tips...

Here are a few hints after you get going.

1. Watch you layers palette. If something disappears it most likely just got layered underneath something else.

2. You can re-size a photo by clicking on the photo, checking the show bounding box, hold down the shift key and drag your mouse until you get the desired size (this is much faster then typing in sizes under image size)

3. When you open photos and scrapbook supplies make sure they are minimized so you can see everything at once--if you maximize you will only see one thing at a time.

4. Get online and look at some digital scrapbook galleries--the more pages you look at the more ideas you will get.

5. Watch your font size. 12 pt font is what we typically read so don't make your journaling 35 pt just so you can see it in Photoshop...when you print it out it will look ridiculously large...zoom in and use a smaller font. Keep titles big though--we want to see them.

6. Take it slow. Get comfortable with one or two things...create a few pages with them and then try reading through another tutorial the next time you scrap. I have multiple layouts where I worked on specific skills--circles, rounded edges, drop shadows, etc Eventually you will get it all on one page.

7. Learn how to use templates. This is a DSM tutorial labeled clipping masks. Templates are pages with the layout already "drawn out" all you do is add paper, photo's and embellishments.

8. Download some quickpages. Quickpages are predone pages were all you do is drag on your photo and add journaling. DSM sponsors a quickpage exchange every month. If you are up to it find this thread on their forum, learn to make a quickpage, submit it and you will get a whole bunch of great quickpages at the end of the month.



Saving...

Once you have completed a page you will obviously want to save it. If you want to print or put the image on the web you will need to convert your page to a jpeg file. It will give you the option of high or low quality for the web you want low for printing you want high.



Printing...

I haven't done much of this just a few pages here and there at Walmart. Costco is suppose to be great as far as pricing and quality. I believe they will print a 12X36 page for $4.99 that's 3 12x12 scrapbook pages...so $1.75 each! There are also online sites that will print photobooks Shutterfly, Snapfish, Mpix are all sites I have checked out, but I haven't used any of them yet.

Anyway--I hope this is helpful and if you have any questions drop me a comment.