Digital Scrapbooking

For those of you who are comfortable with a computer, or those who want to try something a bit different with scrapbooking…there is another way to create stunning scrapbook layouts rather than with paper, embellishments, glue and scissors. Digital scrapbooking has really taken off in the last few years and is becoming increasingly popular.

All you need is a computer with a photo-editing and drawing software such as Adobe Photoshop or Corel Paint Shop Pro. Many people use digital cameras which mean all your photographs are already on your computer ready for you to create into pieces of art.

There are so many different potential outcomes of digital scrapbooking. There are two main routes you can choose from. The first is the technological look. This is all about clean lines, geometric shapes and banners. This is the sort of look that you can find on many websites and is reasonably easy to create from scratch all by yourself – ideal for beginners.

The second is the traditional look. This is all about replicating the look of a traditional paper scrapbook on the computer. You can recreate pretty much anything you would use on a traditional scrapbook using programs such as Photoshop. This does take a lot of work and requires you to be reasonably advanced in using Photoshop. There are many websites that will give basic tutorials for digital scrapbooking…for instance, how to create buttons, how to make realistic ribbon and how to add shadows and shading.

However, there are ways of creating this look by cheating.  There are lots of websites that you can purchase digital scrapbooking elements. Elements are all the parts you will need to create a digital page – background, alphabets, toppers etc. These can be purchased individually or as coordinated kits. There are also many sites offering free elements to give you a taste of digital scrapbooking without having to spend any money.

Visiting websites such as these and digital scrapbooking forums are a good way of building up the ideas and skills needed to scrapbook digitally.

If you don’t have access to software such as Corel Paint Shop Pro or Adobe Photoshop there is also a software called GIMP that you may want to consider.