Digital Scrapbooking Made Easy

What is a scrapbook without the photos?! The easiest way to capture some fantastic pictures of your family in action is to use your digital camera.
I'm sure you already know how easy thay are to use and probably have already mastered using your digital camera. So, this should be the easy part of the entire scrapbooking process.

Now, for those of you who don't already have a digital camera, or just prefer to use a traditional film cameras, you can still 'digitize' your
photos without too much hassle when you take your film in to be processed. Just ask the photo tech to place your pictures on a CD-ROM. Most film processing centers will have the capability and equipment to fulfill your request. Then all you need to do is to pop the disc into the CD-ROM drive on your computer, save the photos to your hard drive and you're all set. Simple!

In any event, to make changes to the photos, you will need to upload them and save them on your computer. For this reason, using digital images is much better than using traditional paper pictures
because you can do whatever you wish to the digital images without ruining your original photo!

Editing Your Photos

There are various tools that you can purchase to edit your digital photographs. The best and most effective for what we will be doing here is
also one of the most affordable. It is a photo editing program from Corel called Paint Shop Studio Pro. With a price tag of just $79 it's a fantastic deal and will do what you need, including some pre-designed scrapbook tools. It is available as a FREE 30 Day Trial download, so you can take it for a test drive before you decide whether or not you want to spend your hard earned cash. But really, it's a no-brainer!

I suggest you try it out free first to see what it can do, and see if you like it. So
go to:
Paint Shop Studio Pro

Now, of you're more than welcome to download any of the products that you see Corel website, but remember, for the purposes of making a great
looking scrapbook layout design, we're looking for Paint Shop Studio Pro.

You will have to fill out a form before Corel will allow you to begin downloading any of their free program trial offers, but hey, it's a small
price to pay to utilize such an important, and integral, program that enables you make changes to your digital photos, and even helps you to create scrapbook layouts!

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IMPORTANT SIDE NOTE BEFORE BEGINNING THIS SECTION
If you want to go with a simple 'picture post gallery' then you can skip this section and go straight to the next which will explain just how you
can do this quickly and easily.

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Basically, there are THREE main parts to designing your scrapbook layout.

1.Photos

2.Background Design You Lay Your Photos Out On.

3.Journaling (or the text that describes the photos)


Seems simple? And really, it is! There's really not too much more to the art of scrapbooking than putting together these three elements. The rest is up to you and your creativity. The placement of the photos, the pieces that make up the background design, and meaningful journal entries are all left up to your form of individual expression.

Now it's time to get your thinking cap on and let your imagination run wild! A good way to come up with creative scrapbooking ideas is to view other peoples creations and keep a pen and paper handy to
write down any ideas that stand out from what you are viewing. Keep in mind that you want to
create something ORIGINAL, not just a carbon copy of someone else's work. If it is a design that you really like and would like to try and duplicate, remember to put your own unique spin on the layout.
Try not to plagiarize another person's hard work!

A great place to begin looking at scrapbook designs from otherenthusiasts is:

SCRAPBOOKING.COM

And another exciting new website, that caters for digital scrapbooking is:

DIGITAL SCRAPBOOK PLACE

There is SO MUCH fantastic information inside The Digital Scrapbook Place you would be hard pressed to find another website that equals the quality
AND quantity of material you will find there! It is
well worth giving this site a very thorough once over. Don't forget to bookmark it and visit it on a regular basis for new scrapbooking goodies.

Some Quick & Useful Ideas

If you have a flatbed scanner, you can still make good use of any physical scrapbook kits sold in crafting stores off and online. Basically, anything
can be scanned and turned into a digital
scrapbooking tool you can utilize time and time again!

Don't forget that places like Stock X-Change and iStockPhoto have wonderful elements that you can add to your digital scrapbook collage as
well! Just type in what you are looking for in either site's search box, download, and bingo you have a new element!

Free clipart and backgrounds that are available on the internet make great digital scrapbooking elements too! Using your favorite browser and
Yahoo! Search or Google, type in "free clipart" or "free backgrounds" and you're off! Remember though, most of the images that you find will be
free for personal use only, so you won't be able to sell your digital layouts.

Another great way to come up with some cool scrapbook collages is to think up a theme based on the event taking place in the photos. Where
did you go? What are some of the things you did? Is this revealed in the pictures? Most times when we take photos of family outings there is a BEGINNING - MIDDLE - END type set up within the act of taking the pictures. So, use that to help you layout your scrapbook.

Depending on the amount of pictures you have and the activities you did while on your outing, you could even break those up into separate layouts.

When you make a scrapbook, pretty much anything goes. If you don't believe me, go to a scrapbook website and take a look at the scrapbooks others have made!

Once you've created your layout using your image editing tool(or however you decided to do this), you will need to save it as a WHOLE IMAGE in an easily viewable format such as .JPG or .GIF. For the best looking image, you will want to use the
.JPG format as it gives the best image quality. make sure that you use the highest quality setting, or 100% when saving.

So, you've got your layout designs all ready to go. Now all you need is to find a place to put them and show them off.

The first thing we will discuss here is how you can set up a simple photo gallery, which you can use to display the original scrapbook layouts you have created with Paint Shop Studio Pro. Or you can display a combination of both! Or, you can create two separate galleries for each. It's really not that difficult to set up. First, we'll talk about places that offer online services that handle this type of project, then we'll discuss how you can set up your own photo gallery system from your own private website space.

Online Scrapbook Hosting Services

Let's first look at some of the online scrapbook speciality sites and the services they offer. Since they specialize in the art/hobby of scrapbooking, these will most likely be your best bet, so I suggest you try out one of these first if you are just beginning with digital scrapbooking.They may not be very private, but they are a good place to get more familiar with the process of online scrapbooking. Eash of these services will ask you to create a free account by registering with
them. It's a pretty painless process.

THE COOKIE JAR

DIGITAL SCRAPPERS (here you'll need to register for their forum before you can begin your own scrapbook image gallery)

Other Free Online Photo Hosting Sites

While these called 'Photo Hosting Websites', they are just what you need to share your pictures with family and friends both near and far. And each of them is free to use. Of course there are limitations, so be sure to read all the available information about the services on the websites.

FreeFotoFile
File Post
MyImageHosting
Photo Server
Free Webhosting Image Hosting Listings

Do It Yourself

Now, if you prefer to be able to control everything, then you'll want to have your own web space to put your gallery on. This will keep it private and allow you to decide who has access to your gallery, or galleries.

The best script for the job in my humble opinion would have to be Coppermine Photo Gallery. First of all it's free, and second, it's not too
difficult to set up on your hosting account so long as you have permission to run .PHP files and add Databases. If you have paid hosting, then you more than likely do. If you're running on a free host,
you probably don't. If you don't have any web space at all,and would rather not pay for hostin, then the first option of placing your digital scrapbooks on another website equip for it is your best bet, and you should skip the rest of this section all together.But if you really want to learn how to do this and maybe offer your own scrapbook gallery services to others, continue on!

First things first. You need to pick up a copy of the Coppermine Gallery
Script. Do that from here:

Coppermine Gallery

Now that you've downloaded the script, you'll need to create a directory or folder on your web space where the script will run from BEFORE you open up the script and upload it. Most people simply call this folder "gallery". So, create the folder and upload the script.

Coppermine comes with instructions on how to upload
and install it to your web space. Follow them EXACTLY to ensure that your script has been properly installed and will run properly.

If you find you don't like using Coppermine, you could try the 4images script. You can download it here:
4images.

It is also a completely free PHP image gallery script and comes with its own set of instructions, in both Dutch and English, on how to upload and install it properly.

Keeping It Private

If you're running your scrapbook gallery from your own website, the best way to protect it is by password protecting the specific folder that your gallery resides in. You can easily do this through your web-based administration panel(usually referred to as a CPanel, LPanel, or Administration Area).

Simply find the Password Protected Directories link in your CPanel, or something similar to this if you are using something other than CPanel, open it up, navigate to the folder you wish to protect and click on the FOLDER NAME. A new screen will appear. Add username and password groups to allow specific people to access your gallery. You can use one username/password combination for everyone
to use, or you can give each person a separate username/password combination. But ALWAYS be sure to add an administration username/password combination for yourself!

Keeping your scrapbook private on other sites that you don't own may be a bit more difficult.They may not offer this service. If they do, you will find an option that allows you to keep it private, and should be given a specific link to reach it. You may need to hand out a specific username/password combo to friends and family members, but that usually is not the case.