What Programs Can Do Digi

Hi all,

So today I was cruising some forums, and a question came up. A poster went to the digi area of the site and said Hi I usually do paper scrapping, but would really like to do digi. What do I need. A couple people took a crack at it, and you basically got a adobe response and a paint shop pro response. Now for those of you that don't know those names let me take a step back. When it comes to digi their are a couple big players in the software arena that digi designer as well as scrapbookers use.

Adobe

First is Adobe's Photoshop family of products. Adobe is the big name in graphics. They have been offering Adobe Photoshop since I was in college i the early 90s. There are two versions of PHotshop. First their Elements and then there is CS. Element s is the stripped down watered down version that acts as a simple place for some one interested in doing computer graphics to get started. it has all you usal tool tha tyou would need to do simple editing of photos and assembling layouts. Its also nice becuase it has a lower price than CS and really lets you get your feet wet before investing a chunk of money in to CS.

That brings us to CS. Originally Adobe only made one version of photoshop, and then around version 7 Adobe decided to streamline all their products and offer them under the CS version. CS stood for Creative Suite. The difference between element and CS, is CS gives you a much wider range of tools, image editing options, more power. Basically a tool that ywould easily allow you to make a chistmas card of you shaking hands with the president.

So when looking at the Adobe side the choices really boil down to are you just making layouts with your images, your words, and maybe some products you got online, or are you looking to design your pages from the ground up.

Corel Paint Shop Pro

On the other side of the street we have the other favorite in the digi world, Corel Paint Shop Pro, or PSP as its usually referred to. PSP was originally made by a comapny ASC. their focus make a low priced alternative to Photoshop. You would get most of the same tool, the ability to use filters/plugins, and pretty much everything else. The key defference being it was a lot cheaper. Afew years back Jasc was bought out by Corel. Today Paint Shop pro is still one of the favorites in the graphics community.

The Others

Now these two companies are not the only solutions if you want a graphics phogram. In fact their are some other programs that are cheaper and some that are even free. Here is a listing of some of them

GIMP is a free software (yes FREE.) raster graphics editor used to process digital photographs and other graphics. Primarily GIMP is used for photo enhancement. Uses include resizing and cropping photos, altering colors, combining multiple images, removing unwanted image components, and converting between different image formats. as well as creating graphics and logos. GIMP can also be used to create basic animated images in GIF format. It is often used as a replacement for Adobe Photoshop, the most widely used bitmap editor in the commercial printing and graphics industries; however, it is not designed to be a Photoshop clone.

Microsoft Photo Editor was an image-editing application found in Microsoft Office 97–XP versions for Windows. The program was a tool for doing raster graphics with editing tools to texturize, negative, for gamma control, GIF transparency and many others.

Paint.NET is a raster graphics editing program for Microsoft Windows.Paint.NET has evolved from a simple replacement for the Microsoft Paint program, which is included with Windows, into a powerful editor with support for layers, blending, transparency, and plugins. It is often used as a free alternative to Adobe Photoshop.

Now this is just a few of the many programs out there, but I am not goinfg to list them all out here. I think Wikepedia has done a good job listing them out. You can click here to review them if you like. The bottom line is there are many solutions out their. So before you put down your hard earned money on a program, take a look around.

Now no matter what option you go with their are a few things you want to make sure of.

1. Can the pgogram read images that are jpeg, gif, png formats. More importanly can it read the images you camrea creates?

2. do a google search online for INSERTPROGRAM NAME tutorials. This will let you know whats out their for resources and people to ask questions of

3. make sure it will handle images that are 300dpi. if you want to print your digi items

4. If you want to stay digi and show off your layouts as slide show can the graphics program make slide shows, or at least save the image in a format those program use.

Now for those of you who are not really software savy, or you feel you cant draw a straight line event using a paint program, well your not alone. In fact there are any ( and I do mean many) solutions out there that all you need to do is point click, drag, drop. From you favorite scrap magazines, to special programs from your favorite digi designer, to a really sweet free option that I use, there are many solutions that can use to make your pages and not worry about a paint brush.

Many of your favorite scrapbook magaziesn out their have worked software makers and created scrapbook programs that come complete with digi elements. Infact kodak, polaroid, and others have branded programs that let you quickly assemble scrapbooks in a few minutes.

Next there are many services out there that allow you to make your scrapbooks, and if it suites you need you can then print them out. One example is a site by a friend of my Photobooks etc by Kim Guymon, allows you to download a program, select a theme, insert your images and create a scrapbook that can be sent off and printed out. Another option is a great site I also use, Scrapblog.com. Scrapblog allows you to go online upload your phtos, and then using their themes, and marketplace items allotw you to quild rich quick ad easy scrapbook pages that you can show off as slide shows, or you can take it a step further and have the book printed out.

So that is my primer in to the question what software do I need to do digital scrapbooking. So to review there are a lot of solutions out their some cost money, and some are free. What you need to do is ask yourself, how much can I spend, and what format files does my camera make,

I hope this information has helped. If its not clear, please comment and I will try to get your and answer, or write some more info.

Now Blogging from my old treo

Hi all,
I just set up my phone to sms to this page. Seems straight forward but you cant add too much. So I might just use twitter on the road and blog from home or when I can get to the laptop. So this opens the question. What technology do you use on the go. Do you take photos with your phone. Do you use cell photos, sms messages and other modern features of the phone to scrap?

We want to hear. Thanks for your time

J

What makes it a scrapbook

The other day I was reading one of the many scrapbooking forums (sorry could not find the forum) and a person started arguing with another poster that her digital scrapbooking layout collection couldnt be considered a scrapbook. After rolling my eyes at a person who was just making a mountain out of a mole hill, or is just closed minded to other possibilities, I started to think. What really is it that makes our collection of cherished memories a scrapbook. Now some dictionaries define a scrapbook as a book, similar to a notebook or journal, in which personal or family memorabilia and photos are collected and arrange. But really if you look at the history of the craft way before Utah, you will see that scrapbooks were products of the current technology

Now some historians say beginning in the 15th century, commonplace books, popular in England, emerged as a way to compile information that included recipes, quotes, letters, poems and more. Each commonplace book was unique to its creator's particular interests. Friendship albums became popular in the 16th century. These albums were used much like modern day yearbooks, where friends or patrons would enter their names, titles and short texts or illustrations at the request of the album's owner. These albums were often created as souvenirs of European tours and would contain local memorabilia including coats of arms or works of art commissioned by local artisans. Then in 1570, it became fashionable to add colored elements depicting popular scenes such as Venetian costumes or Carnival scenes. These provided affordable options as compared to original works and, as such, these items were not sold to commemorate or document a specific event but specifically as embellishments for albums. Later in 1826 with the development of modern photography created by Joseph Nicéphore Niépce, came what was seen as the first permanent photograph . Photography became available to an ever-widening population with the invention of George Eastman's paper photographs in the late 1880s and the mass production of the Kodak Brownie, a camera designed to be simple (and inexpensive) enough for a child, in 1900. This allowed the average person to begin to incorporate photographs into their scrapbooks.

So as you can start to see what we now see as scrapbooks, photo books, and even photo albums, were just results of the technology that was made available to the average person. Now look around today at the average household. More and more people are moving away from paper items (books, newspapers, magazines, etc..) for several reason. Paper is getting more and more expensive, it takes up room, if not properly stored and treated it can fade or even deteriorate. So it stands to reason that people will move to a more technical solution to collect their sacred memories and mementos. In the 20th century and before paper was the gold standard there was nothing better, but now there is a choice, and as more people become better aquinted with technology, I see more people storing their scrapbooks electronically. Whether its a electronic frame, a slide show on their media PC, or its a online slide show, I really see this new presentation medium as an extension of what has come before for hundreds of years.

Now personally I prefer the idea of having a paper album with memories that you can thumb through, but really with my available time, and my skills with computer graphics, I have decided to do my layouts digitally. Does this mean all paper scrappers need to go digi? Heavens no. Its just there are many of us that are comfortable doing digital, just like there are many who only do paper. I think the future of the craft is a bridging of the two ideas Whether thats making designs digitally and printing it out using services like craftsassy.com or Photo Books {etc}. Or designing your projects with paper, verious tools and glues and scannig them, or maybe it will be a interactive technology we have only dreamed of. The bottom line is like any creative medium there are many variations out there, and we can all appreciate each others work and collectively say we all make scrapbooks.

Thanks for yor time

Jeff

Our New Home for Rambling On!!!

Hi all,

I have finally updated our blog. We were using an old tool from our content site, but there are just too many cool add ons now that our old blog did not support. You can still read our old postings by going to: http://bwscrapbooking.com/modules.php?name=News

So tell us what you think. What types of digi, paper, or hybrid scrapbooking do you want to discuss?

We look forward to hearing from you.

Jeff
Owner
BWScrapbooking