Digital Scrapbooking Hints & Helps

Embellishments

• Don’t get too carried away adding embellishments. Just like accessorizing an outfit in the world of fashion, a good rule of thumb is to view your finished layout and remove one element so that you’re sure your overall page isn’t cluttered.
• An odd numbers of elements look best. Here again, you’ll see the visual triangle strategy applied.
• While all digital scrapbooking software programs come loaded with pre-designed pages and albums, you can also import digital elements that you’ve purchased separately. For some good sites to purchase digital scrapbooking elements, be sure to read our Digital Scrapbooking Elements reviews.

Colors

• Choose a color (or colors) from your main photo to base your design scheme on. Most digital scrapbooking software programs allow you to easily “sample” a color (or colors) from your photos. Then you can use it to color a background, text or other digital elements.
• Using a monochromatic color scheme (various shades of a single hue) creates a striking page that allows your photos to take center stage.
• If you have colors in your photos that clash, change the images to black-and-white for a cohesive look. This is also a good way to make your layouts more timeless. Removing the colors keeps the “current” color fashions from influencing your interpretation of the image.

Output/Sharing

• Print—Whether at home on your inkjet printer or via a print service, all digital scrapbooking software allows you to print out your layouts. Once you’ve got the pages printed you can add dimensional elements to your layouts and then simply insert them into an existing album or skip the extra elements and go straight to the album. Another advantage of digital scrapbooking software is the ability to print multiple copies of the same layout making it easier to share your layouts with friends and family or to maintain multiple albums (say one for you and one for each of your children.)
• Movies/CD—Many digital scrapbooking software packages have the capability of creating and exporting a movie or slideshow of your album. Some will even let you add music and embed other videos within the layouts. If the software you’ve chosen doesn’t allow this, you can still create a slideshow or movie with your pages. Just export them as jpeg files and then import the files into a slideshow or movie editing software program. You can create and export a QuickTime movie that is easily shared with loved ones far and near.
  Exporting your layouts and burning them onto a CD or DVD is a good way to back up your digital designs in case of a computer failure or other mishap.
• Online—Share your layouts online on your blog, Facebook or through email. Most digital scrapbook software will, at the very least, allow you to save your pages as jpegs which you can then post on practically any online social networking site or other “sharing” site.

These are just a few ideas to help you really get the most out of your digital scrapbooking software. There are several other review sites that will be helpful when choosing the best product or service for your scrapbooking needs. Check out our Digital Camera reviews, Digital Photo Printing reviews and Inkjet Printer reviews. At TopTenREVIEWS We Do the Research So You Don’t Have To.™