Scrapbook Shortcuts: Going Digital

A few weeks ago I started a series of scrapbooking posts, highlighting the methods I use and how those practices have changed over the forty years I’ve been making memory books. Today’s topic? Going digital.

That’s because one of the biggest changes occurred when I switched from using film to taking digital photos. Whereas before, I got just 24-36 shots per roll and was limited to using whatever developed (pretty much as is), now I have literally hundreds of photos to sift through, sort, and edit from any given event.

I plan to discuss in a future post how I organize all those photos and pare down the collection to the few I actually paste into my scrapbooks, but for now, suffice it to say that all that editing and storage is done on my computer.

And for folks who prefer working on the computer to cutting and pasting and getting their hands (or house) messy, digital photos opens up a whole new option: digital scrapbooking.

Of course, there are lots of digital scrapbooking companies to choose from, but Adorama Pix recently offered to let me sample their service in exchange for an honest review of the finished project.

I agreed and will tell you that they far exceeded my expectations.

Since I already have a system I like for scrapbooking, I picked 26 of our family’s favorite photos and used them to make an alphabet book for my little ones, using one of the readymade templates from the Adorama Pix collection.

What I love about Digital Scrapbooking with Adorama Pix

Several things really impressed me about my experience with this company:

• Turnover Time

  First of all, my photo book arrived so quickly. Just a few days after I completed the online order, I had the finished book in my hands.

• Durability

  Second, the book is so durable. I was expecting the pages to be a little flimsy, like a cheap brochure, but they’re made with professional grade photo paper and are nice and stiff. They aren’t as heavy as board book pages, but are definitely thicker than the majority of children’s picture books we have on our shelves.

  That means my children will be able to look through them again and again and again without tearing pages. The matte finish has almost a pebbled texture (you can glimpse it in the photo above where the light hits the page on the right). That means the kids won’t leave fingerprints, either.

• Design

  Third, I love the lay-flat binding. There’s no wasted space in the gutters. You could even let panoramic photos splash across two pages without any separation (something I can’t do in my traditional scrapbooks).

• Quality

  And last, I love the quality of the photo printing. These pictures I took don’t really do the book justice, due to all the glares and shadows, but the color in the original is true to life and vibrantly rendered in fade-resistant ink. That means my photos will remain just as colorful for future generations as the day I took them (something that, again, is sadly not the case for some lower-quality photos in my own childhood scrapbooks).

Adorama Pix offers hundreds of ready made templates for you to use in creating your photo book, or — if you prefer — you can design your own from scratch. It is simple to change background colors, photo sizes, fonts, borders, and clip art “stickers” to make a book as unique as you are.

So if you haven’t started scrapbooking or are ready for a change — or if you have a special event such as a wedding or graduation or anniversary you’d like to document in a beautiful, lasting way — I’d definitely recommend you give Adorama Pix a try. For a limited time, you can get 25% off any square photo books (6×6, 8×8, 10×10, 12×12). Just use this code during checkout: pxusfam25