Creating a Digital Scrapbook Layout Using a Quick Page and Scrapbook Factory

This tutorial is available as a short video and as a written text with screen shots.

Digital scrapbooking can be as easy as click and drag. User-friendly software, such as Scrapbook Factory by Nova Development, can have you Digi-scrapping in no time. This tutorial will take you step-by-step to making a completed digital scrapbooking layout, starting with a quick page as your foundation. You'll see it's all click and drag as we insert the quick page and the photo, add the title and journaling, and save for online viewing.

You will want to choose your page layout size. For this tutorial, a 12” x 12” (single sided) layout will be used. Choose “scrapbooks” and “12 x 12”, and click “finish”.

With the blank page in place, choose “Insert” > “Graphic” > “From File”.

This will take you to inside your hard drive, find the folder where your quick page is stored, click on it, and choose “OK”.

Now stretch the quick page to fill the full 12” x 12” page. Click on a corner of the quick page, and drag outward to the corner of the template page. Pull all 4 corners outward to fill the space.

Create a Digital Scrapbooking Layout Using a Quick Page and Scrapbook Factory

You'll follow the same procedure for adding your photo. Click on “Insert” > “Graphic” > “From File”. This will take you to the files on your hard drive. Browse through the list and find the photo you wish to use for this layout. Choose the photo, and click “OK”.

The photo will appear on top of your layout. Stretch the photo to entirely cover the whitespace (aka- hole in the .png file) for the photo.

Notice the photo completely covers the white box. You now will want that photo to be layered behind the quick page. Click once on your photo (this selects the image you wish to maneuver). Then click “Arrange” > “Send to Back”.

Create a Digital Scrapbooking Layout Using a Quick Page and Scrapbook Factory

This layout needs a title. To add text, click “Text Tools” from the left hand menu. Then choose “Add Your Own Text”.

Create a Digital Scrapbooking Layout Using a Quick Page and Scrapbook Factory

This will bring up a text box. Here you can choose your font, font color, and text shape or path. Font size won't be a problem, as you will stretch the text box on the page later.

Create a Digital Scrapbooking Layout Using a Quick Page and Scrapbook Factory

Type in your text, choose how you want it formatted, and click “OK”. Stretch the text box to the desired size for the title.

You’ll follow the same procedure for adding journaling.

Create a Digital Scrapbooking Layout Using a Quick Page and Scrapbook Factory

This layout is done. To save it as a Scrapbook Factory file extension (.sbk), choose “file” > “save” > name your file and click “save”. To save for any online viewing, or e-mail attachments, you want to save it as a .JPG file and reduce it. Right now this digital layout may be as large as 25 MB, which would be perfect if you wanted to send it to a printer service to have printed. For online viewing, though, you want to reduce it to around 100 kB.

To save as a JPEG, click “File” > “Export As Image”

Create a Digital Scrapbooking Layout Using a Quick Page and Scrapbook Factory

You’ll want to leave this as 12” x 12” or reduce it down to a smaller square – but it will not create a correctly formed 8.5” x 11” layout since it was created as a 12”x 12”. It’s best to leave “Maintain Aspect Ratio” checked.

Leaving the default resolution set to 96 dpi is usually fine for online viewing. Click “Save”.

If you had wanted to save this layout to be printed, you could change the resolution to 300 dpi, and that is usually a good size.

Having saved this layout in the original software format (.sbk – for Scrapbook Factory), creates the option later to “Open” this layout, add more embellishments, change the font, the text, etc, and save again as a layout to be printed or to be viewed on line. It also allows for the quick reuse of the layout – just click on the photo – replace, and click on the text, and change the words. Quick Pages are true to their name!

You'll find more tutorials by clicking on this link: free scrapbook tutorials or by looking inside the member area. You can also learn more by visiting Jessica's Scrapbook Blog.