Customer Reviews

Digital Memories: Scrapbooking with Your Computer

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An answer to all my problems! My husband bought the family a new digital camera last year and we have been taking hundreds of pictures. I have many stored photos on the computer that I'm trying to figure out how to use in my scrapbooking. Not only do I now have all kinds of easy to use techniques to enhance these photos for use in my scrapbooks, but now I'm working on pages for the internet to share with grandparents that live out of state. There are many books and magazines that show you creative scrapbook pages but none that really show you how to make more of your photographs and computer to create better scrapbook pages. Techniques that used to take me hours by hand are now done in minutes on the computer. The instructions are easy and the author covers several different types of software (we've purchased Photoshop Elements). We have a very special photograph of my great grandfather that had been damaged. I've now designed a special scrapbook page using the photo as a centerpiece thanks to the help I got in fixing the photograph.

Digital scrapbooking has become very popular and in this book the author, Carla Rose, shows you how to blend digital and traditional scrapbooking to expand your creativity.

Your first step to creating a scrapbook is deciding on a theme or story to tell. Based on that, you choose a style that reflects your project and yourself. Now you are ready to gather your tools and get started creating. Rose discusses the tools for traditional scrapbooking and what is needed to go digital. She covers the advantages and limitations of several software programs.

Moving on to page design, Rose discusses aspects of page composition such as the use of white space and leading to enhance the readability of your pages. Next she explains the rule of thirds and how to use grids to help you design your pages around a center of interest which is usually, but not always, a photo or photos.

She discusses each page design element individually starting with background color and texture. She suggests creating background papers from scanned objects such as candy canes, leaves and fabric.

Rose then talks about photos. She discusses various corrections that you may need to make to old photos. She shows you step-by-step how to fix a badly damaged photo and how to turn a regular photo into a vignette (oval) shaped image. Next she covers correcting and enhancing your digital photos. She shows you how to blur the background area to enhance the subject of a photo. You may also need to make corrections to perspective, color, contrast or red eye.

She explores having fun with your photos by applying special effects and filters. Using plug-in filters and your software program, you can turn your photos into watercolor paintings or line art. You can also create a composite or collage from several photos.

Rose discusses the basics of typography and how to choose a font that will reflect the theme and style of your scrapbook. She discusses the special digital effects that you can add to your text such as drop shadows and embossing.

Publishing your scrapbook on the Internet has become very popular and Rose discusses the basics of webpage design and HTML. She has included the HTML code for a sample webpage to get you started.

Carla Rose is a professional photographer and Photoshop expert. She has written several computer books.

I received this book as a mother's day present this year (after griping that I didn't know what to do with my digital pictures in my scrapbooks). The book is amazing and very easy to read and follow. Though I'm still exploring the huge amount of information, I've already used some of the techniques like turning photos into watercolors (you'd swear I spent hundreds of dollars having an artist do an original watercolor of my daughter when actually it only took me about 20 minutes to do it with Photoshop Elements). I am also going to get a lot of use out of the sections on using clip art instead of stickers or stamps and computer fonts instead of rub off letters. I'd recommend this book to anyone who needs new scrapbooking ideas!

I hesitated to buy this book without seeing it 'in hand' first. I took the chance and I am *so* very glad that I did. This is an excellent reference book. It's an easy read, is extremely helpful, and it provided me with more information than I realized I needed. The author is experienced, opinionated, and direct; all of which lead to a book that is emininently useful.

One of my fears in buying this book was that it would be so biased toward PC users that it would be useless for me as a Mac user. I was extremely pleased to find out that was far from the case. In fact, the author has written several books on working with the Macintosh computer. That said, this book is meaningful to ANY computer scrapbooker, regardless of their computer platform or operating system.

Finally, the book includes reviews and recommendations on software, printers, etc, which I found very helpful.

I purchased this book because it promised "Creating one of a kind backgrounds". I was hoping for some tips on using brushes, blend modes and images to create interesting backgrounds, but that was not the case. I will hold on to this book though because it is a good reference for creating effects, editing images and getting things organized. If you are just getting started in digital scrapbooking this book will guide you through important steps in putting things together.

I have read the first few chapters and already have learned some things that I didn't know even though I've been working with graphic packages for years. We can all learn more.......I feel the book is going to be useful. Hopefully it will get me up and really doing digital scrapbooking.....it looks easier than it is. The book is well layed out and very organized. I would recommend this book to a new digital scrapbooker like myself.....have fun with it and get up and doing it......

J'ai adoré ce livre car l'auteur parle autant de scrapbooking sur papier que sur ordinateur. Après avoir lu une partie du chapitre 7, j'ai pu effectué des corrections sur de vieilles photos de famille avec un résultat époustoufflant et cela en quelques minutes. Très bon livre de référence pour les gens qui veulent apprendre à faire du scrapbook autant manuellement que sur l'ordinateur.