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Scrapbooking has become popular these days. Millions of people are creating scrapbooks every day and countless sites, books, clubs, stores, and magazines are dedicated to the craft. So why is scrapbooking so popular? It may be because people enjoy the creativity involved in adding value to their pictures with themes and ornamentation.
You can be almost as creative with a digital scrapbook as you can with a paper one. However, you won't need any paper, printed photographs, glue, or scissors. For a digital scrapbook, all you need is a copy of Microsoft PowerPoint, some cool backgrounds and graphics, a few digital pictures, and lots of imagination. The advantage of digital scrapbooking is that you don't need to print your pictures (unless you want to), and you can share your scrapbooks by email.
Scores of specialized scrapbooking programs are available, so why should you use Microsoft PowerPoint? Here are a few reasons:
- You may already have PowerPoint, and although PowerPoint is much more expensive than common digital scrapbooking programs, it is also much easier to use.
- Many other users already have PowerPoint, so it's easy to send them a PowerPoint file.
- Although PowerPoint creates slides, not scrapbook pages, in the digital world, a slide is almost a page.
- PowerPoint slides use the same proportions as scrapbook pages, and of course, you can set your slides to any size you want.
- PowerPoint includes access to a great clip art gallery. PowerPoint users can insert any of these graphics into scrapbook slides.
- PowerPoint includes many fill options, including solid colors, textures, patterns, pictures, and gradients. PowerPoint 2007 also adds cool effects such as bevels, 3D effects, reflections, and shadows.
- You can insert many graphic file formats into PowerPoint.
- You can add sounds and movie clips to your PowerPoint scrapbook slides.
- You can rotate, crop, and adjust picture properties inside PowerPoint.
- If you use a template, you can have the same background in all of your scrapbook slides. You can build upon that design at the slide level, so every scrapbook slide is a little different.
- If you have a Wacom tablet, or a Tablet PC, you can write notes with your pen into your scrapbook slides.
- It's easy to find support on PowerPoint from web communities, discussion forums, newsgroups, and even friends and family since so many people use PowerPoint.
- PowerPoint is a cross platform program that works on both Windows and Mac.
- You can animate pictures and scrapbook embellishments in PowerPoint easily.
Although PowerPoint has a lot of advantages, it has some disadvantages (and workarounds) that you should be aware of as well:
- Most PowerPoint presentations by default have a resolution of 96 ppi (pixels per inch). If you want to print your scrapbook slides at high resolution, the default resolution can be a problem. However there are ways to get around this limitation.
- PowerPoint is not a specialized scrapbooking program. You may need certain options that PowerPoint doesn't have. Of course, you can work around problems; after all much of scrapbooking is about finding new ways to work with old things.
For some advanced designs, you'll need to use a companion image editing program. Fortunately, there are scores of free and low priced image editing programs available. If you are ready to splurge, you can get a copy of Adobe Photoshop. (Photoshop and PowerPoint work well together!)
Here are a couple of examples of PowerPoint scrapbook slides.
These screen captures are from my new book called the PowerPoint 2007 Complete Makeover Kit.
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