Digital Scrapbooking Introduction
Imagine for a minute that the only things you needed to make amazing scrapbook pages are your digital photos and your computer! No more expensive brads, tags, punches, scissors, glue, endless supplies of cardstock, paper, ribbons, embellishments, photos you printed and never use, etc! No more running out of the right colors of anything or getting stuck, or realizing you cropped a picture too small or wishing you had an enlargement! Oh, and to clean up, just shut down Photoshop! Perfect with little kids around! If you have a few minutes, open up your page, and then finish at your leisure. When you are done, email the pages easily to family and friends, print them and back them up on your computer or CD/DVD!
Digital Scrapbooking (DS) is simply AMAZING! I am going to outline just a few things you can do in a program like Adobe PhotoShop CS:
1. Recolor pictures – the sky is the limit here with your creativity, but if you are a traditionalist you can do sepia and black and white instantly…
2. Resize pictures – you can easily and quickly crop or resize any picture, into any shape you like! You can enlarge and reduce!
3. Recolor paper, ribbons and embellishments – do you need just the right color cardstock or ribbon? You can recolor (almost) anything! So, once you stock up on some basic ribbons in digital format, you have every ribbon you will ever need.
4. Go back and undo or edit anything!
5. Print as many copies as you like!
6. Make darling custom photo announcements for baby births, birthday parties or Christmas cards!
So how do you get started?
The best way I know how to tell anyone, and how I learned, is in a class. Check around and see if any local adult education classes, college classes or other places have classes. Ask at your local scrapbook store. Most colleges will have PhotoShop classes, however, this may be hard to translate into scrapbooking and may focus mostly on photos. Just for reference, the class I took was 12 hours long, and I feel like we barely scratched the surface…Another note, and not to be discouraging, but PhotoShop is not something that is easily self-taught…even if you are kind of a computer guru, it would still be hard…
There is a site I know of that does offer an on-line class specifically for Digital Scrapbooking:
http://www.digitalscrapbookplace.com/university/Scrapping101/basics.shtml
These sites offer some tutorials:
http://www.theshabbyshoppe.com/tutorials/software_tutorials.asp
http://scrapbook-elements.com/sbe/index.php?option=com_content&task=section&id=13&Itemid=97
So, one of the fun ways to get interested is to look at Galleries to see the amazing pages other normal people are making! Here are a few of my favorite inspiration spots:
http://twopeasinabucket.kaboose.com/pg.asp?gallery=4
http://www.theshabbyshoppe.com/photopost/showgallery.php?cat=506
http://heatheranndesigns.com/pp/
Deciding if DS is for you!
So after you have perused some sights, looked at some galleries and done a little research on your own, you will need to decide if DS is for you…
1. Selecting a DS program. There are a lot of options out there, but the only 2 programs I recommend are Adobe PhotoShop CS (#1 pick) and Adobe PhotoShop Elements. PhotoShop CS is expensive…last I checked I think around $700…so this is a big investment. This is what I have, and it will give you the most functionality and flexibility. Elements is significantly cheaper (Costco had it a few months back for like $50 after rebate) but you lose functionality. I would not even bother with any of the prepackaged Scrapbooking programs – they are very limited and you cannot buy any of the kits, embellishments, etc. you see for sale on the sites under Shopping below. If you or a family member are enrolled in a college or university, see if you can get a significant discount on PhotoShop that way. I personally feel like I save a fortune DS by not using all of the paper, wasted supplies, and wasted photos that traditional scrapbooking used to waste.
2. Decide if you will miss the hands on approach of traditional scrapbooking. Personally, I do not miss it, but I also belong to a card club and we make handmade cards each quarter so I don’t miss the physical paper/embellishment part of scrapbooking.
This link will take you to my favorite digital scrapbooking store front – Michelle Coleman was my teacher and she is so talented! I feel so lucky to have had one of THE best designers in the industry teach my class!
http://www.littledreamerdesigns.com/shoppe/index.php
Here is her blog too, sometimes she gives away freebies!
http://mysecondmile.blogspot.com/
The FUN Part – Shopping!
Ok, first off let me tell you that the shopping for DS supplies can be 100% addictive, I have to control myself because there is so much gorgeous stuff available!
Here are 2 ways to save money:
1. Download as many freebies as you can, there are many, many freebies available and remember, you can recolor and resize almost anything!
2. Watch for sales and get on the email newsletters for the shopping sites you love. I often get 50% or more off of my orders this way.
Here are my all-time favorite stores (in no particular order)!
http://heatheranndesigns.net/catalog/hadtemplate.php?tname=products
http://www.designbydani.com/store/index.php
http://www.theshabbyshoppe.com/scripts/homepage.asp
http://scrapartist.com/store/index.php
I hope this brief introduction to the wonderful world of Digital Scrapbooking has inspired you to check it out! Your scrapbooking life may never be the same when you see what you can quickly do with DS! I can make a page in 15 minutes or so that I am happy about. Here are a few examples of pages I have made. Good Luck!
13 comments:
This is awesome! I have been so curious about this topic but not sure how to go about investigating. Thanks for all the tips and links! Will your sister in law be available for questions??? :)
I know Elements is, but are the DS kits/software, etc. Mac friendly?
In your opinion is it more economical?
I was a tad confused-do the kits and things download into PhotoShop and you use them there or do you need a separate program for DS.
This was so GREAT! Thank you, thank you, thank you! If your sister in law is answering questions, I'm still a little confused about this high tech stuff... Is the end product still 3-dimensional with actual ribbons and brads and stuff, or is it just a computer image? And if it is, does it get sent to you in the mail, or again, is it a computer image that you print off at your house? I haven't looked at all the sites yet, so maybe that would answer my question.
One more thing, this just looks so cool, and I am intrigued, but also so confused. You buy the actual program, but then you are still buying materials too? I am curious about how economical it is as well...
I love this! I'm not into hands-on "crafty" things, so I've never been interested in scrapbooking. However, I love organizing and designing things, so this is perfect for my photo-crazy self! It brings back my ol' HS yearbook editor days... :) Plus, my husband would probably be thrilled not to have me continue printing off every photo that I love (which is almost all of them) and buying massive albums for them all. It adds up fast!
I will see if she can answer some of your questions! Her blogger name is kaysvillekennedys
I will try to answer a few of the questions here.
I do believe everything is Mac friendly, I remember my teacher saying that.
If you used PhotoShop or Elements, that will be the program you use all of the kits or individual items you buy. So, you would open PhotoShop, and then open up a background paper, open a ribbon, etc. You do not need a separate DS program.
What I have done to organize all of my papers and elements is create folders on my desktop such as "ribbons", "metals", "tags", "background papers", etc. and I file them they way too so that if I just need a ribbon, I am not opening a million kit folders to find the right thing.
The other thing I didn't talk about was Brushes. This is one of my favorite parts of PhotoShop, and unfortunately you lose most of the brush functionality in Elements. Think of brushes like stamps, only you can resize the stamp to any size and also recolor to any color. So you can have one alphabet brush set that can look so different each time. There are also fun paint stroke brushes (that you can also use as an "eraser" instead to make things look either inked or grungy), flourishes, flowers, the sky is the limit! Brushes also allow you to create your own paper when you get more advanced.
As for the economics, if I did not already own PhotoShop I would probably buy Elements...I am cheap and the price fits! Elements will allow you to do most of what you will want to do as far as I understand it.
As I mentioned too, the kits are pretty cheap especially considering you can recolor most of the items, etc. and use them over and over and over...Plus, I really do get lots of free kits and free elements -- I have so many kits I bet I have used about 1/10 of them and I also have my favorites I go back to all of the time.
Also, I can create any color "cardstock" which is very easy, so I never have to buy that.
For printing, I do 12x12 scrapbooks so I print at Costco for $1.49 sheet and I prefer Lustre to Glossy for sure. If you do 6x6 scrapbooks or 8X8, you can even print at WalMart, just print on a 8x10 and cut it. This comes in handy for mini-albums. You can make the pages any size you would like -- another thing I love.
I also should mention that there are lots of pre-made albums that are just beautiful and SO easy to use! You basically "slide" your photos underneath the images/pre-made pages. I will post an example of an album I made for my honey for our 10 year anniversary. These are quick! Here is a link to some of my favorite pre-made albums.
http://www.theshabbyshoppe.com/scripts/prodList.asp?idCategory=31
Ok, I'll keep looking at the questions every few days, I know it's a lot to absorb!
Ok, instead of posting my anniversary album which I can't locate, I will have Lindsay post one I made for my Mother In Law after a Disney trip.
Trying to understand ... This does seem really great and something I would LOVE to do! My husband's hobby is video and photo editing so we've got a lot of programs. He has Adobe Photoshop CS 2, will that work? I'm not familiar with the program, is it any different from Adobe Photoshop CS? Also, once you finish the page you have it printed at Costco, just like a regular photo? Do you bring the paper to Costco (or whereever you're printing) or do they provide it? And then you just put it into a plastic cover and into the album? It's that "simple"?
PhotoShop CS2 is just the newer version of CS, so you are SET! You bring the finished files on CD to Costco in jpeg format and tell them how many 12x12s you would like, or whatever smaller size. They print them on actual photo paper, either on glossy or lustre (my favorite choice). Then I just slide them into the plastic covers of the albums of my choice.
Sooooo cool.
I have Adobe Elements already. If I want to give this a try and eventually look into Adobe CS, can I transfer the kits I buy to CS?
Yes, once you have the kits, they are just your files so you can use them in either program.
I am a member of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter Day Saints ... I don't know how many of you are ... I just came across a wonderful LDS digital scrapbooking website.
Here's the link: http://digitalmemoryart.com/
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