Unleashing Your Creativity : Digital Scrapbooking

Evolution of the Scrapbook

Jill — Wed, 13 Aug 2008 17:08:00 GMT

What are the roots of today’s digital scrapbook? A scrapbook is a visual method of storytelling to preserve a legacy of history in the form of photographs, printed media and memorabilia presented artistically in decorated albums. The digital scrapbook can be traced back to ancient Greece, where a special notebook known as a “hypomnemata” was used to record events people had heard, seen or read that they wanted to preserve and remember.

In early America, some of the most well-known scrapbookers included Thomas Jefferson and Mark Twain. An avid scrapbooker, Mark Twain devoted entire Sundays to the hobby and then sold his books through Montgomery Ward.

In the 15th century, books called commonplace books, often used by students, were used to record prayers, poems and information such as weights and medical formulas. Eventually, commonplace books also held illustrations, newspaper clippings and recipes, and proved to be a valuable way to share information.

With the advent of photography, scrapbooks began to feature mounted photos with handwritten captions. A scrapbook layout might include letters, newspaper articles and other mementos. Young women in the Victorian period created memory books, friendship albums or visitor’s albums containing signatures, cards, locks of hair, poetry and pictures of their family and friends to give as gifts or preserve memories.

The Traditional Scrapbook
In the United States, Utah’s Marielen Christensen is often credited with reviving interest in scrapbooking. She began designing creative pages and three-ring binders for her family's photo memories and displayed them at the World Conference on Records. She and her husband published a how-to book, Keeping Memories Alive, and opened a scrapbook store in 1981 that remains open today.

The traditional art of scrapbooking has often brought women together socially to make scrapbooks and share their work and memories. These hobbyists, known as scrapbookers or scrappers, still gather at each other's homes, local scrapbook stores, scrapbooking conventions and retreat centers. The term "crop," a reference to cropping or trimming printed photos, was coined to describe these events.

In the late 1990s, many U.S. scrappers opened stores to turn their hobby into a business. Between 2001 and 2004, the scrapbooking industry doubled in size to $2.5 billion, with more than 1,600 companies creating scrapbooking products by 2003. In America, the hobby has surpassed golf in popularity: One in four households has a golf enthusiast; one in three has a scrapbooking enthusiast!

Scrapping Goes Digital
Naturally, scrapbooking has modernized with the computer age. Creating a digital scrapbook is the process of using a scrapbook layout to create pages using photo- or image-editing software. Digital scrappers import electronic photos and scrapbooking graphics into their image-editing programs and arrange them to create digital scrapbook pages.

Digital scrapping was inspired by the methods, style and culture of traditional scrapbooking. Today’s scrapbook layout and computer programs are designed to capture the look and feel of traditional scrapbooking and provide creative control over all the elements--even ones on premade templates.

And the social element remains intact in the digital scrapping world. Many digital scrappers get together to share their digital resources and knowledge about editing programs. They read blogs, attend scrapbook conventions and meet others in online digital scrapbooking chat rooms and forums. It’s easier than ever to share a digital scrapbook with anyone, anywhere!

Time and money savings are among other benefits digital scrapbookers realize over glue-and-paper scrapping. In addition, while a traditional scrapbook layout and photos can fade or yellow over time, a computer-generated scrapbook layout is archived in a digital format where it’s kept safe from the effects of time, heat, oxidation and other factors. A digital scrapbook layout never loses its detail or color.

Another feature people love about the digital scrapbook is that they can add small notes or embellishments to each photo in the scrapbook layout to convey the story more vividly. This allows them to add their own creativity to the scrapbook layout.

With digital photography rising quickly, many scrapbookers edit all their photos on the computer before they ever put them in an album. They remove red eyes, crop distracting backgrounds and enhance the color of images, sharpening the overall effect of their digital scrapbook and giving it a professional look.

Traditional scrappers are realizing they don’t have to learn programming to create a digital scrapbook or photo collage. This part of the digital scrapbook has been catered to by professionals and is served to the scrapper on a platter in the form of a premade template and scrapbook layout, often featuring themes carrying mass appeal.

Scrapbooking has come a long way since ancient Greece, but its purpose and effects remain the same, and the digital scrapbook will only boost the popularity of this ancient art, helping preserve special memories for centuries to come!

Remembering Family Vacations Through Digital Scrapbooking

Jill — Tue, 12 Aug 2008 18:56:00 GMT

Sigh. You’re back from your family vacation and faced with unpacking, doing laundry and returning to the daily routine. As your family settles into the daily grind at home, photo collages can help keep the memories of those special family moments from fading.

Creating photo collages not only helps preserve those treasured moments forever … it can also be a fun family project or a creative, therapeutic outlet for self-expression. You may have returned from your trip, but your digital camera’s card can take you back. And making photo collages is one post-vacation activity that can be very enjoyable. Some even look forward to it while they’re still on vacation!

More and more, families today are discovering that the easiest, most innovative and enjoyable way to preserve their vacation memories is through digital photo collages. Many busy families lack the time, space, money, materials and sheer patience to create paper scrapbooks. Plus, in our digital age, we all want to download our digital pictures and share them over e-mail. Photo collages—also known as a digital scrapbook—take photo sharing a step further.

When you consider the user-friendly scrapbook software programs available, the fun graphics, quality printability and ease of sharing electronic photos with friends and loved ones , the booming popularity of the digital scrapbook is no surprise.

Photographing Your Vacation to Optimize Your Digital Scrapbook

You can use a still camera and then scan in your photos later, although a digital camera is most conducive to making photo collages. Be sure you charge your camera’s battery before you go and bring a charger or extra battery, camera bag and at least two camera cards with plenty of shots available.

Today’s scrapbook software programs allow you to choose your backgrounds, collage frames and special effects such as words, scrapbook clipart and collage art. Scrapbook page layouts range from simple drag-and-drop images into a readymade scrapbook template to blank scrapbook layouts you can design from scratch. Either way, collage makers can check out the wide range of options available for photo collages and keep them in mind when looking through the camera lens.

Many vacation destinations feature signs welcoming tourists to the area, and some collage makers photograph these signs to include in their digital scrapbook. Another useful tool is to take a general background shot of an empty beach or other unencumbered scenery to use as the scrapbook background. Small details such as flowers, birds and butterflies can also make pretty accents on your digital scrapbook.

Of course, you’ll want shots of the whole family and individual family members enjoying vacation activities, as well as pictures featuring your family in a setting that reveals a unique aspect of your destination. Often these will comprise the star images of your personalized photo collages to help you look back on your vacation.

How to Make a Collage

Once you’ve returned from your trip and wish to start preserving your vacation memories, keep the following tips in mind as you embark on your digital scrapbook:

Create your photo collages while your vacation is still fresh in your mind, if possible.
Import your photos onto your computer and keep them organized in a folder.
Create a subfolder of your favorite pictures and name it “Digital Scrapbook” or “Photo Collages.”
Choose a photo editing program that senses whether each photo should be horizontal or vertical and automatically adjusts it as necessary while importing; this will save you from having to manually rotate all your vertical pictures later.
Adjust lighting where possible and delete fuzzy, unflattering, uninteresting, poor-quality and redundant photos.
Edit your photos to zoom in on attractive faces and crop out excessive, uninteresting backgrounds. Cropping can also conveniently erase saggy beach bellies and that random tourist’s bald head in the corner.
Consider whether your partner or child will approve of their photos before including them in your photo collages and sending them to your friends and extended family. Your family’s digital scrapbook should be shared and enjoyed by all.
When choosing your scrapbook layout, keep in mind which photo collages are most apt to be universally favored by your family. A pink, flower-laden background may not appeal to your teenage son for a family photo, although it might make a nice personalized photo collage to print and frame for your daughter’s bedroom wall. Create several scrapbook designs to ensure that each member of your family can appreciate at least one of your photo collages.
Choose a scrapbook layout large enough to accommodate the number of photos you wish to feature in one digital scrapbook, and keep in mind that less can be better when choosing accents and scrapbook clipart.

When you feel satisfied with your photo collages and have received the approval of your discerning featured family members, it’s time to share your vacation memories with your friends and family who care to see your digital scrapbook. Be sure to include a description of your vacation destination and date somewhere in the e-mail, such as in the subject line, if you have not included this information in the digital scrapbook itself. And don’t forget to print copies of select photo collages for your parents and others who may not have Internet access.

Now prepare yourself for many compliments on your family vacation photo collages!