Gone Digital

I started scrapbooking way back in high school. It’s always been something that I’ve enjoyed doing and have spent many, many hours over the years scrapbooking with friends and roommates. However, in recent years it’s been difficult to keep up with creating albums for each of the kids as well as a family album. Even though I’ve been a “traditional” scrapbooker – paper, trimmer, adhesive, photos, etc… much of what I did was on the computer. Before getting pictures developed I spent time cropping and resizing them based on the layout I had in mind. All my journaling and titles were created on the computer and positioned just so it would fit exactly as I imagined. It was a time consuming process, but a process I enjoyed.

Back in January I came to a crossroads. I was an entire year behind. Nothing from 2009 was in an album. I’ve been tempted to go “digital” for a few years now and decided it was time to make the switch. So for the past few months I’ve been working on putting together our 2009 family album. Even though I’ve spent many, many hours creating the pages in Photoshop I still feel like the process was much quicker being completely digital (and much less messy too). This afternoon my finished book was delivered (FYI - I ordered through Blurb.com).

I was so nervous to see the final results. I was concerned that the colors and patterns that I created on the computer wouldn’t look the same in print and that the pictures would look grainy. Overall I am very happy. I do think you lose some quality in your pictures this way, but it wasn’t enough that I think most people would notice. I LOVE that I’m able to have HUGE pictures in the book without dealing with the added cost of printing enlargements the traditional way. And the major reason for me to go digital is that 156 pages takes up only ½ inch on my bookshelf verses the three or more inches of a traditional album(s). Another great positive is that now when I put together a book for each of the kids, most of the pages are already done – everything is saved forever and can be reprinted anytime – no more needing to physically create the same page two-four times. My one complaint, and it is a big complaint for a perfectionist like me, is that you don’t have control over what gets cropped during printing. I was very careful not to put any journaling, etc... on the outer edges of a page so it wouldn’t be cropped off, but their instructions didn’t say anything about losing any content on the inside edge. As a result, MANY elements appear off center in the middle of the pages and on several pages I’ve even lost some journaling in the binding. For example:

MAJOR disappointment, but I suppose I’ve learned what I need to do differently in the future. It will however annoy me tremendously.