TekBlogger.net

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 trial. Look for a program that comes with a free trial so that you can check out exactly what the program offers. The best programs will offer a full-featured trial so that you can try everything out and not have to guess at what you might be able to do should you purchase the software. A digital scrapbooking software program that does not offer any sort of free trial should be avoided.

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. Kits & Templates Made By Top Scrapbook Artists. Don’t get taken in by products that come with 50,000 pieces of “clipart”. Do you really want your scrapbook to look plain and generic? I didn’t think so! Look for products that include professionally-designed scrapbooking embellishments, ideally by top digital scrapbook content designers. Insist on being able to see a list of everything that you get. There’s no reason why everything that is included with the software can’t be viewed on their website!

4. Online Discussion Forums. The program you choose should offers free access to their online community discussion forum. This is where you can ask questions 24 hours a day about the software, and get answers back from both the staff and other users of the software. Even more importantly, you can read the honest opinions of others about the software program and its capabilities. Be cautious about any digital scrapbooking software program that doesn’t have an open discussion forum! The size of he forum, will also tell you something about the software. Some products have tens of thousands of users, showing you how popular it is!

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!

Read more about digital scrapbooking software. Stop by Gracie Madsen’s site where you can find out all about digital scrapbooking and how much fun it is.