Scrapbooks have gone wild! Dull books stuffed with old photos and memorabilia have faded away. Now you can create colorful, imaginative digital scrapbooks for every occasion: wedding, anniversary, baby, birthday, vacation and holiday. Not only can you print your scrapbook, you can email it to distant relatives and friends. Are you left out because you don’t know how to scrapbook? Now there are free tutorials offering step-by-step instruction and free downloads full of themes, page layouts, fonts, backgrounds and scrapbooking essentials. They’ll show you how to mix and match pages, scan and crop your photos, create your own portfolios, as well as offer tips on improving your photography, like changing your photo angles, using color filters and removing red-eye. While the download and instructions are free, these sites will charge a modest fee to ship your completed scrapbook. You start by creating a folder on your desktop. When you scan your photos and keepsakes, save them with a high-resolution .jpg, at least 300 DPI to ensure quality reproduction, to this folder. You can then add backgrounds, type in notes or messages and print them for invitations, announcements, cards for special occasions or to store in an album. Your computer must have a photo editing program such as Adobe Photoshop or Paint Shop, or illustration software such as Microsoft Publisher or CorelDraw, or any software that supports the PNG file format. You will also need a scanner/printer to reproduce existing memorabilia, and a digital camera so you can start creating new memories. Digital scrapbooks are just a fun, new way to preserve your memories. |
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