Digital scrapbooking has many advantages over traditional paper scrapbooking. You can save a lot of money by eliminating the need for all those expensive tools and supplies, plus you avoid having to pay for expensive papers and embellishments – that you’re only able to use one time! Then, there’s the time savings. Getting setup to do paper scrapbooking, plus all the cleanup can take longer than the scrapbooking you get done! However, if you’re using a digital scrapbooking software program, you just start up your computer, and you’re scrapbooking in seconds.
As you can imagine, not all digital scrapbooking software programs have the same features or even the same ease of use. While some scrapbook programs look OK in their marketing material (some even have fancy boxes!), when you get them home, they’re not quite what you were hoping for. Even worse, some digital scrapbooking programs are extremely confusing. They have cluttered interfaces and more tools than you can imagine what to do with! Programs like that aren’t you’re best choice for scrapbooking. Oftentimes those products are just rebranded image editing applications, that have been re-marketed as scrapbook software…
On the flip side, be aware that you can buy digital scrapbooking software that isn’t flexible enough for you to express your creativity. While “easy to use” is good, “simple” isn’t exactly the same thing. You’ll find a number of products that are limited to only a handful of templates, and worse still, you can’t customize them to fit your vision. And finally, while many digital scrapbooking software programs are reasonable priced, there are some products that are really quite expensive. You don’t need to use the same tools as a professional graphics designer in order to get excellent results for your scrapbooks!
So how do you know when you’ve come across digital scrapbooking software that’s good quality, a good value, and most importantly, will work for you and your digital scrapbooking project? Here’s a check list of the top five criteria to look for as you wade through the digital scrapbooking software choices:
1. Free downloadable trial. Do you really want to put down your hard earned money, and just hope that what’s in the box is going to do what you want it to? Would you buy a sweater without being able to see the style or even know what color it was? Download the trial version of whatever digital scrapbooking software you’re interested in, and try it out!
2. Full Creative Control Over Your Pages. Your digital scrapbooking software should have options to let you begin a new scrapbook from either a blank page or from a fully-editable template. This gives you the flexibility to really express your creativity, yet when you just want to create a quick page or brag book, you’re able to still add your own creative touch to it.
3. Professional Digital Scrapbooking Kits. Some products come with a lot of “clipart”. Some even have tens of thousands of pieces of it! However, clipart isn’t a great selling feature in digital scrapbooking software. Instead, you want to find a product that has real scrapbooking content, made by top digital scrapbooking artists and designers. The product you choose should come with top quality scrapbooking content, like digital papers, embellishments, backgrounds, and template pages made specifically for scrapbooking. In this case, quantity isn’t nearly as important as quality. You should also be able to see *everything* that comes with the software on their website.
4. Online Community Forums and Support. In the world of software, it is almost mandatory that a program is accompanied by an online forum where customers can ask questions about the software, receive technical support from the company’s staff and fellow software users, and, most importantly, post their open, honest thoughts about the software program and its capabilities. You should be cautious about any digital scrapbooking software program that doesn’t offer an open forum for users to discuss the program. Look for a program that offers a free online digital scrapbooking software community forum. The best programs will have very large communities, with numbers in the tens of thousands. This alone is a testament to the product’s popularity and user friendliness.
5. Scrapbooking Tutorials and Instruction. Look for free digital scrapbooking tutorials on the company’s website. You want to see visual demonstrations about how to use the software. Also look for an extensive User’s Guide and Help File available from within the program. That way you can always get answers to questions, at any time (even if you’re scrapbooking on a plane!) that may come up as you go.
So, don’t just walk into your local big box store and plop down your cash for the mystery software in the fancy box! Use the above list to narrow your selection, and you’ll end up buying a digital scrapbooking software program that you really enjoy! Once again, it should have a free trial download for you to test out, it should have fully customizable pages so you can express your creativity, it must come with real “top quality” scrapbooking elements, it should have an open and honest forum for you to interact with other scrapbookers and the company should provide tutorials for you on their website. If you look for these 5 things, you’ll find a great scrapbook program that you’ll enjoy for years to come!
Want to find out more about digital scrapbooking software? Visit Gracie Madsen’s site on choosing the best scrapbook program for your needs.
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This post was written by Gracie Madsen on November 3, 2009
