Scrapbooking is a great hobby and art form. Preserving your family memories and histories is an excellent thing to do for yourself and for your family. Traditionally people go to their local craft store purchase a scrapbook and the materials that go with it. This entails using a lot of room at their home and a small mess with clippings and glue. With the advent of the Internet this scenario has changed. Now there is a vast amount of information online that allow for digital scrapbooking. With the Internet you will not have to deal with all the clippings and glue.
Now with doing things on a computer you will have some distinct advantages over traditional scrap booking. Keep in mind that you will be giving up some things also. But we'll talk about that later. With the computer you will be able to regenerate a photo an endless amount of times. If you happen to mess one up while you are working on your scrapbook then it isn't that big of a deal. You will also have many different fonts and labels. Most of these will be for free. You see avid scrapbookers are more than willing to help you out for free.

Another great advantage to digital scrap booking is that getting the scrapbook out to your loved ones is much easier than with a traditional scrapbook. With a traditional scrapbook you would either have to take the scrapbook around, ship it around or make multiple copies of it. Not that easy of a thing to do. With digital scrap booking you can email it, post it to a family website or burn a CD and send it in the mail. How much easier is that not to mention less expensive?
Another tremendous advantage is all the effects you can do to your scrapbook at the click of a button. You can easily color your letters. You can apply various effects to your pictures to make them standout. You can remove the red dots in people's eyes that seem to always happen when you take their picture. You can digitize your own handwriting. If it is a Christmas album you can make it snow. In one of my last albums I had specific songs playing for each different page. The effect was very powerful and got exactly what I was feeling across to my family. The options are almost endless.

You will need a few items to be able to do scrap booking. The first is a computer, of course, not an issue since you have to have one if you are reading this. The next is quality scanner. You will need this to get actual pictures into you computer. You should also invest in a decent digital camera. Pay special attention to the software that comes with the camera. These packages are normally quite good and will definitely enhance the pictures in your albums. If you don't want to buy a digital camera then don't worry there are a number of free packages available online.
Make sure you don't pass up this great new trend in scrapbooking. Now earlier I mentioned that there are some downsides to digital scrap booking. Digital scrapbooking, like all things on computers, can be a little on the non-personal side. Traditional scrapbooking is great because you share the creation of the albums with your loved ones. You can spend an afternoon putting one together with your kids and reminiscing with them about the pictures of your family. This is quite powerful. There are also scrapbooking clubs so you can socialize while doing your hobby. Interaction with other people is important and I think gets lost in these days of computers. Ultimately I expect you will find that blending digital scrapbooking with traditional scrapbooking is the best way to go. Each have their strengths and put together they benefit greatly.

5 Easy Steps

Digital scrapbooking is gaining in popularity rather quickly. However, to someone who is just getting started, it can seem like a daunting project to start. It doesn't have to be this way. You can start digital scrapbooking in 5 easy steps.

Step 1. Gather your gear. You'll need photo's on your computer. They can be photo's you've taken with your digital camera, photo's others have emailed you or old photo's you've scanned and imported to your computer. It doesn't matter how you got them on your computer, what's important is they are there!

Step 2. Decide which software you'll be using. There are two types of software for digital scrapbooking. Layout programs and photo editing programs. There are a host of layout programs for digital scrapbooking. Layout programs allow you to assemble and make digital scrapbook pages easily. They help you organize digital photo's, page themes and journaling. Sadly, many of these programs leave something to be desired for serioius digital scrapbooking.
The other type of program for digital scrapbooking is the Photo Editing software like Photoshop, Corel's Paint Shop Pro, Adobe Photoshop Elements or Microsofts Digital Image Pro. Paint Shop Pro and Adobe's Photoshop Elements are two of the most popular and easy to use Photo Editing software for digital scrapbooking. You can find online tutorials for each program if you don't already know how to use them.

Step 3. Create Your First Digital Scrapbook Page. Here is where the fun starts. You'll want to find some tutorials about laying pages out (layering), resolution count and creating your first basic page. You'll be choosing templates, photo's, embellishments, decorations and other elements for your first page. Don't get carried away, keep it simple until you get a few pages under your belt. You can then try new things and techniques.

Step 4. Store you newly created scrapbook page. There are a number of ways you can choose to store your digital scrapbook pages. You can save them as a high resolution JPG image, in the native format of the program you're using or as a low resolution JPG. Also, make sure you create proper folders on your computer for you digital scrapbook pages. Nothing is more frustrating than hunting for pages you know you created but can't find!

Step 5. Show off your pages. There are many services where you can choose to share your newly created digital scrapbook pages with friends, family and the whole Internet! You can also email them to other people, but be warned, the size of the scrapbook pages can get huge and you could fill up someones email box by sending them a huge file.

It really is this simple to get started with digital scrapbooking. There are many, many places on the web where you can get ideas for you own page. There are galleries of other scrapbookers finished pages, forums and blogs. There are no limits to the resources for a beginning scrapbooker!

Digital Scrapbooking is Easier Than You Might Think

When you hear the term digital scrapbooking, do you shake your head? Do you think, I could never do that? It is too complicated. I am not that computer savvy. I will have to stick to the normal, old fashioned way of scrapbooking? If you do, you may be wrong, really wrong.
Digital scrapbooking is getting easier and easier every day. There are many websites that are helping even the more or less computer illiterate people learn how to add their beautiful and captivating photos digitally every day. Plus, there are corresponding websites and software programs that accompany many digital cameras that we can buy. These corresponding programs and websites that cater to our cameras make digital camera even easier.
Digital scrapbooking is also a great way to edit our photographs. We resize them. We can crop at images we don't want. We can take out those awful red eyes. We can add new backgrounds, we can add music. We can build pages that say and does many things, some things that even our imaginations haven't conceived, yet.

The first thing you need to get started on your way to becoming a digital scrapbooked is to have a digital camera. You can buy these in many different price ranges and in many different styles. You can buy digital cameras with zoom lenses, with voice recorders, etc. If you are new to digital cameras, you may want to stick with the basics.

You can avoid using a digital camera, by using a scanner to scan your photographs into your computer. You may also want to use a scanner along with a camera. Scanners are great if you find clippings out of the paper that you would like to include in your digital scrapbooking pages.
As for the types of scrapbooking pages, you can find some pages that are pre-colored and pre-styled. Then all you do is upload the images you want to the page. These are the basic and easiest pages to use. Yet, some people find these to be a little boring.

Stick with some of the easiest pages, in the beginning. You can always try your hand at harder and more complicated pages later.