First of all…Proceed with caution, digital scrapbooking…can… become very addicting! *smile* So, I have had many people ask me (Love, Erin, & Seeker…hope you swing on in for this one) about the digital elements that I use on my blog. In fact, Morgan just commented on that last night…so I whipped up a quick 101 to digital scrapbooking. I am happy to share what I know. Keep in mind, I only discovered this about 4 months ago and just taught myself how to do it, SO I am sure there other ways, BUT this is how I learned.
First of all, there are tons of designers that sell their digital goodies on the Internet. I will share some of my favorite places to get great stuff for blogging or scrapbooking at home. Keep in mind that if you put it on your blog, the designers do ask that you credit their stuff on your page. I just do it at the end of each post. Also, many designers offer freebies that you can download, but here are some of my favorite places to buy:
These are just a few of my favorites, I am sure there are other great sources out there.
You need a Photo Editing Program that will allow you to put together your pages. This photo editing program will need to support .png files and allow you to layer photos on each other.
Suitable programs are:
Adobe Photoshop (PS), Adobe Photoshop Elements (PSE), Jasc Paint Shop Pro , Microsoft Digital Image Pro (DIP), Ulead Photo Impact (PI), Corel Draw, LumixFoto Fusion, Memory Mixer, or Broderbund PrintShop.
* I Love using Printshop version 22 to do my pages. I picked up the program at Target a couple years ago for 50 bucks (link here for a special) and I think it works great. This is not the best program out there for this, but cheap and easy to use. It meets my needs great. Photoshop is the best, but pricey!
Now, this is a tutorial directly from two peas in a bucket (another great site) on how to get your digital elements to you computer and ready to use.
“In order to download the digital kits, you will need WinZip or some other software that will allow you to ‘unzip’ these files. If you don’t already have it, you can download it here www.winzip.com. These kits are all ‘zipped’ up (because they are such big files and would take forever to download otherwise) so you can ‘unzip’ them to the proper size & use them in your software programs. This will allow you to see your individual pieces or elements. It will automatically save it on your desktop. Mac users, double click on your zipped file, PC users, right click to open it up. Unzip (or your computer may say extract all files) it & store it on your desktop, so you know where it is. Later, you can burn it onto a CD so it won’t take up too much memory on your desktop” Organize your files in folders by designer, that way you know whose art is whose.
Now that your files are in the correct format you can open them in your program and create your pages. You can choose to make pages whatever sizes you want (12×12, 8×8, or even just pretty up a 4×6 photo). You are layering your elements (papers, your photos, embellishments, text) all on top of each other. You want to save your work in 300 dpi and keep a layered image until you are finished (it is good to save as a layered image so you can go back and change as well). You need to flatten the image before printing and uploading for use on the web. My program requires that I export the image out in order to flatten (merge all layers into one).
The possibilites are endless. I love digital scrapbooking for use on here, to make little holiday/birthday cards and invitations, to preserve family memories, and for gifts. I designed a 20 page hard cover book for Mother’s Day that was just awesome! I did it through Shutterfly. Have fun with it. Again, I am no expert, just having fun and learning along the way!
