how to get started

what is digital scrapbooking? | photos | software | printing | resources

photos

Many people get into digital scrapbooking initially because they have a digital camera. You can create digital pages using the photos that you download from your camera from templates (can be bought on online stores) or by making unique pages for your album by buying kits, paper packs, etc.

Scanning is another way people convert their photographs into digital form. Many digital scrapbookers who use a camera with film select this option. This is also a great way to preserve older photographs that you may be collecting from family members.

Digital photographs are usually downloaded to your computer (either via camera or scanner) as a jpg or tif file. Saving files at high resolutions may take longer, but it will result in a photograph that can be blown up to bigger sizes.

Most online stores offer all of their products at 300 dpi. What does this mean? DPI stands for dots-per-inch—so, a digital paper that is 300 dpi has 300 dots of color in each inch of the paper. The higher the dots in an inch, the higher the quality of the paper or picture. For example, if you printed this website page out, much of it would be fuzzy. That is because visuals on computer screens are set at 72 dpi. It is a lower resultion because it loads quicker and is easily visible on a screen (but since it only has 72 dots-per-inch, it does not print well).