Tapestry Adoption Story Digital: 1. Getting Started with Digital

Step 1: You need photos or video on your computer.
If you have a digital camera this is easy. You can download your photos from your camera to your computer. If you don’t have a camera, you will need a scanner to scan them in.

Step 2: Choose your software.
There are two types of programs available to digital scrapbookers: layout programs (Nova Scrapbook Factory Deluxe, ScrapBookMax) with minor tools for photo editing, and digital image/video editing software that can also be used to create montages/collages, album pages, digital slide shows or flash video. At Tapestry we recommend either the free online services such as Google's Picasa, Yahoo's Flickr, Photosite or making the commitment to learn software such as Adobe Photoshop Elements, and Premiere Elements. Our preference is for having software we can do a wide range of tasks with, and keeping the photos on our desktop while we are working on them. The Adobe's "Elements" products are scaled down enough to be consumer friendly for those already exposed to working with software like Office Powerpoint or Publisher, or even anyone that has used simple online photo sites for their digital pictures. The advantage to the Adobe products is they offer strong tools for improving the digital content, excellent output options for sharing and creating printed albums or slide shows, plus a large user support base.

Step 3: Create your scrapbook pages.
Many websites offer inexpensive "Kits" and "Elements", which are packages of high resolution images that can be used to help design pages. Some sites focus exclusively on adoption themes and offer images, kits, layouts, and text that are adoption oriented such as a country specific Kits. Page Kits can be downloaded or ordered on CD that will work with your program and teach you about layers and how a basic page is put together. Gather ideas for your pages and see the work of other scrapbookers from the many available general scrapbooking websites.

Step 4: Share your pages
There are many ways to share your pages from printing them and putting them in albums, to uploading them to the internet. Internet services such as Kodak EasyShare, Picaboo enable you to upload pages and order bound photo albums. Blogging software such as TypePad, Vox, Nokia's LifeBlog, or YouTube are additional ways to share your photos and video online. The web is one of the easiest ways to share your Adoption moments. Usually free, quick and easy, photo sharing websites let you post images or video to galleries that friends and family can view wherever they are. Photoshop Elements 5.0 comes with a slideshow feature built in. It allows you to use multiple music selections, transitions between your photos, and the ability to sync your photos to the music. You can make both slideshows for your computer or output to media that can play on most DVD players.