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The Secret Guide to Digital Scrapbooking 2 Copyright © 2008 Scrapbook.com, Mesa, Arizona. All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system or transmitted in any form by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording, or any other - except for brief quotations in printed reviews without the prior written permission of Jill Davis & Scrapbook.com. T h e S e c r e t G u i d e t o D i g i t a l S c r a p b o o k i n g A D i g i t a l S c r a p b o o k e r ’ s G u i d e Compiled by S C R A P B O O K . C O M E D I T O R : M E R E K D A V I S NOTICE: Scrapbook.com is not affiliated with, associated with or endorsed by the websites referenced in this online resource (except for Scrapbook.com and ComputerScrapbook. com). Screenshots are for reference purposes only and owners of referenced sites own all trademarks and copyrights to their respective sites and content. If you would like to have your site considered for this book, or if your site is included and you would like to have it removed, please email digitalguide@scrapbook.com” The Secret Guide to Digital Scrapbooking 3 Table of Contents Chapter 1 Digital Freebie Sites Chapter 2 Digital Stores Chapter 3 Templates Chapter 4 Forums Chapter 5 Galleries Chapter 6 Software Chapter 7 Tutorials Chapter 8 Quick Pages Chapter 9 Brushes Chapter 10 Fonts Chapter 11 Actions D I G I T A L F R E E B I E S I T E S C h a p t e r 1 We al l love free stuff for digital scrapbooking. There are good freebies, and then there are GREAT freebies. We chose some of our favorites based on qual i ty, quantity, and ease of use. The Secret Guide to Digital Scrapbooking 5 Designer Digitals Click here to go to DesignerDigitals.com’s freebies With over 30 freebies all from different designers, Designer Digitals freebies section has something for everyone. There are a lot of beautiful freebie quotes, which makes this site a quote- hunters gem. Cottage Arts Click here to go to CottageArts.net’s freebies Cottage Arts has nine, high quality, freebies. Their kits range from brush packs and paper packs, to a sample pack to create a whole layout. What’s nice about these freebies is that they are linked to the actual products so you can easily get more coordinating elements and more information about the freebies if you want it. The Secret Guide to Digital Scrapbooking 6 Ikea Goddess Click here to go to Ikea Goddess’s blogspot freebies What does Ikea have to do with digital scrapbooking? We have no idea, but this is a very good site. It looks like every Monday she posts links to tons and tons of freebies. This is definitely a blog that you want to frequent and subscribe to for updates. Digital Scrapbooking Freebies Click here to go to DigitalScrapbookingFreebies.com The name says it all. A site that only has freebies! Can it get any better? They add new high quality freebies each Wednesday and each month they release a full size kit and will keep it posted as long as their bandwidth allows. Word to the wise, visit at the beginning of the month so you can pick up the full size kit. The Secret Guide to Digital Scrapbooking 7 ComputerScrapbook.com Click here to go to ComputerScrapbook.com’s freebies ComputerScrapbook.com has over 12 freebies at any given moment and they constantly add (and take away) new freebies. They offer sampler packs which allow you to try out a paper and some elements from certain element kits. Very high quality. Be sure to bookmark this one and check back often. Shabby Princess Click here to go to Shabby Princess’s freebies Looking for complete kits to download? Look no further. With around 18 kits at any given time, Shabby Princess has free kits with multiple papers, alphabets, elements and even some album freebies. This definitely should be a bookmarked site. The Secret Guide to Digital Scrapbooking 8 eScrappers Click here to go to eScrappers.com’s freebies Element pack rats, this is your heaven. eScrappers has tons, and I mean TONS, of elements for you to download for free. Buttons, photo corners, paperclips, and paint chips samples are just a few of the many freebies they have. Click here to go to eScrappers.com’s textures Textures help create realism if you’re creating your own elements or papers, or when you create pages. eScrappers has tons of textures, each under specific categories such as metal, textiles, bricks, and plants, to name a few. This is a really good resource for those who create their own elements and papers. The Secret Guide to Digital Scrapbooking 9 3Scrapateers Click here to go to 3Scrapateers.com’s freebies Each month they feature a new kit for free. But there’s a catch. They release one new piece of the kit every day. In 30 days, you can have an entire kit and then start over with a new kit on the first of the next month. It’s a little tedious to check back every day, but if you’ve got nothing better to do, and don’t mind a little repetition in your life, then this is a good resource. RAKscraps Click here to go to RAKscraps.com’s freebies RAKscraps has a free digital scrapbook mega-kit available for download monthly. They definitely mean MEGA-KIT. They usually come with tons of coordinating elements, alphabets, quick pages, and papers. Register with their site for access to these free monthly downloads. The Secret Guide to Digital Scrapbooking 10 Digital Scrapbook Place Click here to go DigitalScrapbookPlace.com’s freebies Check every Monday for their weekly freebie, designed exclusively for Digital Scrapbook Place by their designers. They also archive past freebies so you can snag up anything that they’ve offered in the past. This is a definite “must visit” for digital scrapbookers. Raspberry Road Designs Click here to go to Raspberry Road Designs blogspot freebies Almost every day Susan Darter (owner of the Raspberry Road Blog) posts a new kit for free. Her quality matches kits that you would spend $6.00 or more for. Add this site to your favorites and visit daily! The Secret Guide to Digital Scrapbooking 11 Digi Scrap Depot Click here to go to DigiScrapDepot.com’s freebies What would you do with 4,200 digital scrapbooking products? When you find out the answer, let us know! Digi Scrap Depot has several thousand links (yes, you read that right) to free digital scrapbooking graphics and kits. The website doesn’t actually host the freebies but it’s a very good and clean database of great freebies posted on digital scrapper’s blogs around the world. D I G I T A L S T O R E S C h a p t e r 2 Let’s be honest, there are a lot of digital stores onl ine. And lots of stores have their fa ir share of beauti ful and usable digital k i ts. But with so many stores, i t ’s hard to f ind the real gems and great deals. Sure, you dive into the search engines and tr y to f ind the best s i tes, but that wi l l take you days to si f t through al l of the “noise” to real ly f ind the great stuff. So, we’ve done the work for you, and found some of our favorite s ites. These stores made our top l ist for ease of use, organizat ion, security, and var iety of selection. The Secret Guide to Digital Scrapbooking 13 ComputerScrapbook.com Click here to go to ComputerScrapbook.com’s store This store has more printable scrapbooking products than any other site in the world and a wide array of digital kits and papers too. Their selection of digital kits is smaller than some stores, but the quality is top-notch so you don’t have to sift through mar- ginal stuff to get to the great kits. Be sure to sign up for the news- letter here for substantial savings bi-weekly as well as a good amount of freebies. Scrapbook.com Click here to go to Digital.Scrapbook.com’s store Scrapbook.com carries the same products as ComputerScrap- book.com and vice versa. The digital section is part of a large traditional scrapbooking store. You can purchase digital and physical product on the same order, which is very helpful. The store is also linked in with the Gallery (the fastest growing in the world) so you can see layout ideas for digital products etc. It’s fun and helpful to see all the different ways scrapbookers are using products. This is our top pick for “user friendliness.” The Secret Guide to Digital Scrapbooking 14 Scrapbook Elements Click here to go to scrapbook-elements.com’s store If you know digital, then you’ve probably heard of the scrap- book-elements store. Their kits, called Page Sets, are a great resource to have in your digital arsenal. They have over 1,260 page sets! Their prices on the products in the store are very competitive. You’ll notice there’s no “average” price like you’ll find on other sites. This is because the designers (not the store owner) set the price for their own kits. Again, you may have to sift to find the really great stuff here, but it’s certainly here. Ztampf! Click here to go to ztampf.com’s store Ztampf is the personal store of digital designer, Lie Fhung. Lie is one of the most talented digital designers we’ve found, and her kits all coordinate and flow well. Lie is well known for her rich detail and textures. If you want your layouts to have a unique and very artistic flow to them, definitely visit this store. You won’t be disappointed. The Secret Guide to Digital Scrapbooking 15 Scrap Girls Click here to go to scrapgirls.com’s store This is one of our favorites. With over 13 designers, and hundreds of kits, Scrap Girls is sure to have what you’re looking for. The navigation can be a little confusing if you’re new to the site. If you’re looking for paper kits, element kits, collection packs, etc. you’ll find them under the “Beautiful Ready-To-Use Scrap Sup- plies” section. Scrapbook-Bytes Click here to go to scrapbookbytes.com’s store This site is packed (and we mean PACKED!) full of kits, brushes, fonts, and alphabets. One really cool feature this site has is you can access your order history and download your past orders! This is very handy if you ever accidentally delete a download. The Secret Guide to Digital Scrapbooking 16 A Cherry On Top Click here to go to acherryontop.com’s store This is a great site with lots of element kits and heaps of alpha- bets. It’s very easy to navigate and it’s simple to add items to your cart. Just a heads up: there are no returns on download- ables, so make sure you know exactly what you’re buying. Shabby Princess (The Shabby Shoppe) Click here to go to theshabbyshoppe.com’s store Now this site is pretty! The layout of the shop is graphic and user friendly with large thumbnails. It actually makes browsing and shopping enjoyable. The product examples are gorgeous, and the site is very easy to navigate. Our favorite thing about this site? Piece-of-cake albums. Be sure to check them out! The Secret Guide to Digital Scrapbooking 17 Scrap Artist Click here to go to scrapartist.com’s store This site is really cool and is packed with tons of products. Their prices are reasonable and the kits are thought-out and de- signed very well. We really like the fact that they have a section called digi-tools. This section has a lot of overlays and grunge overlays. Our favorite little gem is the Digital Distressing Kit by Nancie Rowe Janitz. That’s a “must-have”. Scrap Dish Click here to go to scrapdish.com’s store This is one of our favorites. They also have a great selection of kits with good designers. New designs are pretty frequent so make sure to add this site to your list of bookmarks and check it out periodically. You can find some pretty good deals in the dollar bin. The Secret Guide to Digital Scrapbooking 18 Peppermint Creative Click here to go to peppermintcreative.com’s store This is a cool site! It isn’t huge, but what they lack in quantity they make up for in originality. Every week Peppermint Creative puts 3 products up as their “must-haves” and knocks 10 percent off the price. KB and Friends Click here to go to kbandfriends.com’s store This site has some great designers on their team. Be sure to sign up for their newsletter for updates and new freebies. Our per- sonal favorite kit from this site is Main Street. Be sure to check it out. The Secret Guide to Digital Scrapbooking 19 OScraps Click here to go to oscraps.com’s store Funny name, cool site. Check out the deals in the clearance section. 3 pages full of great scrapbooking supplies discounted substantially. The Digi Chick Click here to go to thedigichick.com’s store This is a great store with some very unique designers. You can find some good deals in the Bargain Basement section, but the real gem of this site is the work of Andrea Burns. We highly rec- ommend her kits. She’s got an eye for design and she focuses on the details. This site offers 20% off all new products every Thursday, so add the date and link to your calendar. T E M P L A T E S C h a p t e r 3 It’s easy to get overwhelmed when you down- load a kit and have tons of papers and elements, but don’t real ly know how to put them together. Templates help you discover ideas for layouts and placement. The Secret Guide to Digital Scrapbooking 21 Simply Sarah Designs Click here to go to simplysarahdesigns.blogspot.com Simply Sarah has created many templates that are available for FREE from her blog. The templates are REALLY good! Digital Scrapbook Pages Click here to go to digitalscrapbookpages.com’s templates This site has a large catalog of template sets. Each set has a few coordinating layouts. With an average price of $3.00, it’s a good investment considering you can use the same template over and over. The Secret Guide to Digital Scrapbooking 22 Scrap Girls Digital Templates Click here to go to scrapgirls.com’s templates Wow! This site has over 160 template packs. They have pro- duced groups of themed templates, making it easy to create a whole album that flows together. The products are very de- scriptive and usually have great examples showing the finished layout from the template. We highly recommend this site. F O R U M S C h a p t e r 4 Connect with other digital scrapbookers around the globe. Share tr icks, t ips and techniques with others. We’ve registered and par t icipated with dozens of forums, and here are our top picks. The Secret Guide to Digital Scrapbooking 24 The Digi Chick Click here to go to thedigichick.com’s forums Calling all chicks! This group of digital scrappers takes pride in having a close-knit community. There’s daily activity on their forum, and it’s a great place to form strong friendships through digi-scrappin Digi Shop Talk Click here to go to digishoptalk.com’s forums With over seventy thousand threads, this the go-to-site for all your digital questions. Starting up your own site or have your fresh new designs online? With a “Digital Site & Designer” sec- tion, it’s easy to toot your horn and get your name out. It’s OK, they don’t mind tooting. The Secret Guide to Digital Scrapbooking 25 Scrapbook.com Click here to go to scrapbook.com’s forums An easy-to-use digital forum that is integrated with Scrapook. com’s forum, one of the largest in the scrapbooking industry. With such features as your own integrated blog, myplace and gallery tied together, this is a great community driven site. Scrapbook-Bytes Click here to go to scrapbook-bytes.com’s forums One of the oldest digital forums around! Members of the Scrap- book-Bytes forums are long time digital scrappers who can help with a whole range of questions. This is a friendly community where they won’t bite your head off for asking “beginner” ques- tions. G A L L E R I E S C h a p t e r 5 Inspirat ion at your f inger t ips. Did you know that there are l i teral ly hundreds of thousands of digital layouts f loat ing around the Internet? “But where are al l these fantast ic layouts?” you wonder. Look no fur ther! Below are the best digital gal ler ies on the web. But be warned, with the amount of digital layouts you’ l l be browsing through, we won’t expect you to f inish the rest of this book for weeks. The Secret Guide to Digital Scrapbooking 27 Scrapbook-Bytes Click here to go to scrapbook-bytes.com’s gallery Scrapbook-Bytes gallery is probably the largest ALL-digital gal- lery on the web. With over 200,000 digital layouts, this should be one of your “go-to” sites for inspiration. On the downside, this gallery can be hard to navigate, so while there’s lots of great stuff, it’s sometimes hard to find it. The Digi Chick Click here to go to thedigichick.com’s gallery Over 60,000 layouts. This gallery uses the same set-up as scrap- book-bytes so it is also somewhat confusing to navigate. Once you get the hang of this setup you can find some great stuff. In the top right corner of the gallery you can sort by different op- tions, such as: date, views, activity, and alphabetical order. The Secret Guide to Digital Scrapbooking 28 Gotta Pixel Click here to go to gottapixel.net’s gallery Over 75,000 digi-layouts. They also have some cool features such as: Gotta Pixel Designer Central (easy to find designer layouts and new products) and Gallery Challenges. There are some very beautiful and high-quality layouts in this gallery. Scrap Artist Click here to go to scrapartist.com’s gallery With over 60 thousand layouts, you could spend days in this gal- lery. We were impressed by the quality of layouts that some artists have uploaded to this site. Every page had at least three or four impressive layouts that caught our eye. We’re sure you’ll find inspiration at this site. The Secret Guide to Digital Scrapbooking 29 Scrapbook.com Click here to go to scrapbook.com’s gallery Over 500,000 total layouts (Over 70,000 pure digital). This gal- lery is a step above other galleries in functionality. It’s the easi- est to use and navigate and uploading layouts is a breeze. The organization and ease of use is unmatched. Digital products from Scrapbook.com Superstore that are used in the layouts are linked to the Scrapbook.com store. It makes it really easy to see what was used in the layouts. You can also vote for your favor- ites and mark layouts and inspiring, cute, innovative etc. Scrapbook-Elements Click here to go to scrapbook-elements.com’s gallery While this gallery doesn’t have a ton of layouts, we chose this site because they have a specific gallery section linking the products from their store. We like this feature as it makes your shopping experience that much easier seeing the product in action. S O F T W A R E C h a p t e r 6 You’ve browsed the gal ler ies for inspirat ion, down- loaded your freebies to your computer, purchased al l your favorite kits and templates and you’re ready to star t creat ing stunning digital layouts. Not quite. You can’t scrapbook digital ly without the r ight sof tware. And you’re in luck because we’ve found and rated the best scrapbooking sof tware programs in the world to help you out. The Secret Guide to Digital Scrapbooking 31 Lumapix FotoFusion Click here to go to lumapix.com Lumapix FotoFusion is a great program with incredible features including a patented tool for building collages, scrapbooks, and flush-mounted photo albums from digital photos. The collage tool instantly converts a selection of your images into a beautiful and unique photo collage, then provides elegant tools to re- organize, crop, color balance, and package your composition. The resulting collage can be shared with friends and family via email, published to the web as a web album, or printed from business card up to poster size.” Lumapix also offers “Smart Elements” (dynamic scrapbooking graphics) that you can shrink rotate, and manipulate with just a click of the mouse. These smart elements hold their shape and fidelity without pixilation as you resize them. This software is wonderful for creating beautiful layouts and stun- ning collages quickly without much fuss. Photoshop / Photoshop Elements Click here to go to adobe.com The Secret Guide to Digital Scrapbooking 32 This is the “defacto” solution for most scrapbookers world-wide. The learning curve for this software is steep, so be prepared to spend some time learning what all of those buttons and icons do. Once you’ve got a handle on Photoshop, the design possibili- ties are seemingly endless, and if you get good enough, you can even start creating your own digital elements and papers. If you’re serious about digital scrapbooking, you should own a copy of Photoshop (the high end enterprise version for profes- sionals) or Photoshop Elements (the lighter consumer version for hobbyists). If you’ve never used Photoshop, we recommend picking up Photoshop Elements first so you can learn the ropes and get familiar with the Photoshop Interface. Once you’ve mastered Elements, if you want to start creating your own elements, you may want to upgrade to the enterprise version of Photoshop. GIMP Click here to go to gimp.org GIMP (GNU Image Manipulation Program) is a program that works a lot like Photoshop. It shares many of the same features but its open source software, so it’s completely FREE! Everyone loves free software, but it does come at a “cost.” GIMP is more difficult to navigate and understand for first-time users. The in- stallation can also be a bit tricky, so we’ve outlined it below: To get GIMP, you have to download their installer first here: http:// www.gimp.org and then the actual program from the following website: http://gimp-win.sourceforge.net/stable.html The first thing you will see is GIMP itself. Directly underneath that download is the installer for Windows XP/2000 and newer. Below that is the install- er for the old versions of Windows. You will need to download and install the correct installer for your computer, then down- load and install GIMP. It can be a little tricky, but it’s completely worth it to try the software. The Secret Guide to Digital Scrapbooking 33 Gimpshop: is a tool that makes the GIMP interface more like Photoshop which makes it easy to follow tutorials made for Pho- toshop. It can be downloaded from here: http://plasticbugs.com/ ?page_id=294. PSPI: Running Photoshop plug-ins in GIMP. http://www.gimp.org/ ~tml/gimp/win32/pspi.html With this handy little This AMAZING add on makes it so GIMP will also run Photoshop plug-ins! Picasa Click here to go to picasa.google.com Picasa is a free software download from Google that helps you: Locate and organize all your photos and digital elements on your computer; edit and add effects to your photos with a few clicks; and share your photos with others through email, prints, and on the web. It’s fast, easy and free. You should try it to see if you like it. Memory Mixer Click here to go to memorymixer.com You won’t find a lot of advanced editing and design tools, but the Memory Mixer makes digital scrapbooking simple for The Secret Guide to Digital Scrapbooking 34 everyone. If you are brand new to digital scrapbooking and you don’t consider yourself particularly good at using complex software packages then this is great software for you. Corel PaintShop Pro Click here to go to corel.com Our favorite feature about this software is the price! At only $59.99, it’s packed with features that you would find on other products that are much more expensive. It has photo enhance- ment features like GIMP, picture organizer and browser like Pica- sa, and special effects and manipulation tools like Photoshop. ACDSee Photo Editor Click here to go to acdsee.com ACDSee Photo Editor is good software for creating digital proj- ects for your photos. You can take your photos and combine them with digital scrapbooking kits to make pages that will be treasured for a lifetime. In Photo Editor, tasks such as writing text on a path, resizing multiple embellishments, and creating a vignette effect are all easy and straightforward. The Secret Guide to Digital Scrapbooking 35 FxFoto Click here to go to fxfoto.com Make collages, scrapbook pages and slide shows. FxFoto’s in- tuitive tools make creating custom layouts a snap. You can also choose from hundreds of drag-and-drop templates. FxFoto makes it easy to get impressive photo effects. You can also add curved text, frames, and other artistic effects. This is a good entry level software, but it’s not as robust as Photoshop, and not as intuitive as Lumapix FotoFusion. T U T O R I A L S C h a p t e r 7 You probably chose digital scrapbooking over tradit ional scrapbooking for a number of reasons. One of those reasons may include saving t ime. Tutorials can help save more t ime by showing how to do techniques and styles better, faster, and easier. But some tutoria l s i tes can be misleading and hard to understand, whi le others aren’t geared towards scrapbooking at al l . We’ve found the best tutoria ls on the internet that wi l l specif ical ly help you, the digital scrapbooker, f in ish your layouts quicker whi le making them look better. The Secret Guide to Digital Scrapbooking 37 Scrapbook-Bytes Click here to go to scrapbook-bytes.com’s tutorials If you need help or want fresh ideas, hands down this is the best site on the web. They have a large assortment of tutorials for many of the scrapbooking programs such as: Photoshop, Pho- toshop Elements, Paintshop Pro, and others. They also have fre- quently asked questions, a beginners section, and tutorials on photography. Dedicated 2 Digital Click here to go to dedicated2digital.com’s tutorials Another great site for tutorials. Not as expansive as some others, but a good resource to check if you can’t find answers ts some of the other sites listed here. The Secret Guide to Digital Scrapbooking 38 Scrapbook-Elements Click here to go to scrapbook-elements.com’s tutorials Scrapbook-elements has done a great job organizing their tuto- rials. What’s REALLY nice is that each of their tutorials is in .PDF format, so you can save a copy to your hard drive for easy ac- cess and print it out quickly. We really like this feature! Digi Scrapbook Place Click here to go to digitalscrapbookplace.com’s tutorials Digi Scrapbook Place offers digital scrapbooking tutorials for a wide variety of techniques and programs, from your very first page to complex and involved techniques. Most of their tutori- als are general enough to translate without much difficulty into other programs. One nice feature is that Photoshop tutorials that can also be used with Photoshop Elements are marked with an (E). The Secret Guide to Digital Scrapbooking 39 Janee’s Photoshop Classes Click here to go to myJanees.com’s tutorials This website is dedicated to Photoshop Tutorials. Each tutorial is subcategorized by topic. A confusing part of this site is all the thumbnails associated with each tutorial when browsing. It can be a little confusing trying to find what you’re looking for by small thumbnails, but don’t let that get in the way of these great lessons. Scrap Girls University Click here to go to scrapgirls.com’s tutorials There’s a reason why they call it the University! Scrap Girls is packed full of great tutorials and resources. One thing to note is that the navigation can be a bit tricky. Unlike most websites, the navigation bar is right of the main body text. We got con- fused trying to find it and we wanted to save you the same con- fusion. The Secret Guide to Digital Scrapbooking 40 Hummies World Click here to go to hummiesworld.com’s tutorials Hummies World has been setup for Photoshop Elements train- ing only. It’s broken it down into five courses (categories) from beginner to advanced. If you use Photoshop Elements, this should be your first stop to learn the ins-and-outs of this great program. Other Notable Tutorial Sites: CG Essentials Cottage Arts Pages of the Heart Digi Scrapping Tutorials Witty Living Tutorials Q U I C K P A G E S C h a p t e r 8 What are quick pages? Great quest ion, we’re glad you asked! Quick pages are basical ly completed digital lay- outs with placeholders where the pictures should go. Al l you’ve got to do is drop in your own digital pho- tos add customized text ( i f you want) and voi la, your layout is done! These are great i f you want to get a lot of pages done at once, or i f you just need some help kick-star t ing your own creat iv i ty. The Secret Guide to Digital Scrapbooking 42 Gotta Pixel Quick Pages Click here to go to gottapixel.net’s quick pages Gotta Pixel is one of your favorite places to go for quick pages. Their prices are reasonable. Usually around 6 dollars for a col- lection of an ”album” of 7-10 quick pages. Scrapbook-Elements Click here to go to scrapbook-elements.com’s quick pages This site has over 400 quick page sets! This store has organized their quick pages into a 12x12, 4x6 Brag book, 8.5x11, and other quick pages (6x6, 8x8, and cards). The first thing you’ll notice is that most of their quick page products come in a set of a few different pages. This is great and will allow you to create a whole album using one set of quick pages. Their prices are very competitive, and you’ll be spending anywhere from $3.00 to $9.00 on a kit. We were very impressed with the large selec- tion of high-quality quick pages. If you’re in a rush and need some digital pages done quick, we recommend Scrapbook-El- ements! The Secret Guide to Digital Scrapbooking 43 Scrap Girls Easy Pages Click here to go to scrapgirls.com’s quick pages With over 150 quick page kits, you could spend a lot of time at the Scrap Girls Easy Pages. One cool feature is that they package the majority of their quick pages with formatted 8.5”x11” and a 12”x12” quick pages. Our favorite is the calendar easy pages. Click here http://store.scrapgirls.com/product.php?id=11156&cat=2 to check out the 2008 calendar. B R U S H E S C h a p t e r 9 The term “brushes” might be confusing in terms of digital scrapbooking. You might be thinking, “ I don’t want to make my scrapbooking page look l ike an oi l paint ing, so why do I need a brush?” Let us explain and dispel the confusion once and for al l ! A brush, typical ly made for and used in Photoshop, is more l ike a stamp. There are f lourish brushes, f lower brushes, grungy border brushes, shape brushes and…well , you get the idea. There are endless brush designs f loat ing out there on the web, and we’ve picked the best brush sites for digital scrapbookers. Here’s the kicker. Most of the sites we’ve discovered and l isted below have FREE brushes! The Secret Guide to Digital Scrapbooking 45 VBrush *free* Click here to go to veredgf.fredfarm.com’s brushes 160+ brushes for free? It’s true! This designer, Vered, gives away all of her brush packs for free. With over 160 high quality brush- es, this might be the only brush site you’ll ever need. Scrapbook-Elements Click here to go to scrapbook-elements.com’s brushes Great selection of brushes. They’ve been nice enough to orga- nize their brushes by program (Paint Shop Pro, Photoshop, and Digital Image Pro). Unfortunately, you won’t find any free brush- es and be looking to pay between $2 and $12 for each set. But the price is worth it for brush junkies! The Secret Guide to Digital Scrapbooking 46 PSBrushes *free* Click here to go to psbrushes.net’s brushes This is a great site. Over 500 FREE brushes organized into 22 categories. Although this is a great site with a ton of resources, some of the brushes have been categorized incorrectly. Brusheezy Click here to go to brusheezy.com’s brushes This is a great site to bookmark. You can browse by catego- ry and Photoshop version (WOW!!) or sort by download, com- ments, ratings, and newest or oldest. You can also preview each individual brush in the set. There are some amazing high resolution brush sets, mixed in with some pretty...uh...interesting ones. Pick and choose wisely! The Secret Guide to Digital Scrapbooking 47 Photoshop Support - Hi-Resolution Brushes Click here to go to photoshopsupport.com’s brushes Are you tired of finding an awesome brush set, only to find that the brush is too small? Photoshop Support has linked to tons of hi-resolution brush sets in their high resolutions section. Hi-res brushes should be in your must have stash, since 99% of digital kits are done in hi-res 300 dpi. Miss M Handmade Brushes Click here to go to missm.paperlilies.com’s brushes Another freebie site by another talented designer. She has 80 of her own custom brush sets organized into Photoshop 4.0 brushes and Photoshop 7.0 brushes. In the goodies section of the web- site, she also carries textures and tutorials on how to make and organize your brushes. The Secret Guide to Digital Scrapbooking 48 Obsidian Dawn Click here to go to obsidiandawn.com’s brushes This site has tons of free brushes, but can be a little tricky to navi- gate. On the far right are the categories with the descriptions. We’ve found that’s the easiest way to get through the site. There are lots of great brushes, but the design sizes are some- what small in comparison to other sites. GetBrushes *free* Click here to go to getbrushes.com’s brushes This site can be a little confusing to navigate right off the bat. The newest brushes can be found on the left navigation bar and the different topics can be found on the right. Once you get the hang of it, you’ll be able to find tons of free brushes by designer, category, and newest brushes. Our favorite category for scrapbookers is the ornaments and decorative Photoshop brushes The Secret Guide to Digital Scrapbooking 49 500 ML Brushes *free* Click here to go to 500ml.org’s brushes This FREE site has been around for some time. There is only one designer and there are only 50 or so brushes, but what this site lacks in quantity, makes up for in quantity. Make sure to stop by this site. You won’t regret it. F O N T S C h a p t e r 1 0 You love them and yet get fur iously fr ustrated tr ying to f ind the “per fect” font when there are so many to choose from! Well , we’re here to help add to your already enormous col lect ion. On a ser ious note, i t can get a l i t t le overwhelm- ing having tons and tons of fonts. We recommend grabbing FontViewer (http://www.ampsoft.net/utilities/FontViewer.php). This nif ty l i t t le program lets you preview the fonts you just downloaded/got on CD, without spending too much precious t ime! With FontViewer you can say goodbye to long hours spent evaluat ing your brand new col lection of fonts! Preview the font f i les contained in a directory and instal l only the ones you real ly l ike, without having to manual ly open each .tt f f i le! And the best par t is that Font Viewer is free! The Secret Guide to Digital Scrapbooking 51 ComputerScrapbook.com Click here to go to computerscrapbook.com’s fonts ComputerScrapbook.com sells over 100 fantastic fonts made by scrapbookers, for scrapbookers. It also carries a number of Lettering Delights fonts. Scrapbook.com Click here to go to scrapbook.com’s fonts Scrapbook.com sells 100 fonts and carries many of the same fonts as ComputerScrapbook.com. The Secret Guide to Digital Scrapbooking 52 Scrap Village Click here to go to Scrapvillage.com’s fonts These fonts have been hand selected by scrapbookers spe- cifically to coordinate and look natural on your digital layouts. They’re organized alphabetically and have large thumbnails to easily view the details in the fonts. Best of all? They’re FREE. Scrap Girls Fonts Click here to go to scrapgirls.com’s fonts Scrap Girls sells nearly 80 original fonts from Lettering Delights and Amanda McGee. This site is definitely worth your time if you’re searching for that “special” font. The Secret Guide to Digital Scrapbooking 53 1001 Free Fonts Click here to go to1001freefonts.com’s fonts The name says it all. Tons of free fonts that are organized alpha- betically. They have an option where you can purchase and download 6,000 fonts for $14.95. A pretty nifty way to fill your font collection instantly. DaFont Click here to go to dafont.com’s fonts This font site is the go-to site for custom, unique fonts. They cur- rently sell over 7,500 fonts that are organized alphabetically, and by theme for easy referencing. The Secret Guide to Digital Scrapbooking 54 Simply the Best Free Fonts Click here to go to simplythebest.net’s fonts Simply the Best Free Fonts proves they don’t lie and do have some of the best fonts on the web. Search by name, theme (there’s over 52 themes!), and alphabetically. Be warned, though, that although there are tons of free fonts, there are also paid ones mixed in. Don’t get your hopes us too high until you’ve double checked the price tag! Misprinted Type Click here to go to misprintedtype.com’s fonts One of the most unique and artsy font sites on the internet. Most of the fonts featured here are free! Eduardo Recife is the sole creator of these exciting and original fonts. These fonts are some of our favorites A C T I O N S C h a p t e r 1 1 What are actions for Photoshop? In Adobe Photoshop you can record commands, process- es, and operat ions and save them as a scr ipt known as an “action.” Actions can then be played later and al l the recorded steps wil l be applied to any given image. These are a great tool i f you want to apply the same effects to mult iple images but don’t want to manual ly manipulate them over and over. They ’re also a great way to get real ly dif f icult and t ime consuming effects, with just a cl ick of the mouse. The Secret Guide to Digital Scrapbooking 56 Here’s a great PDF tutorial on explaining how to install and use Photoshop actions: http://www.thelightsrightstudio.com/tools/Action- Basics.pdf We recommend reading this tutorial before you do anything else with actions. It will explain everything you need to know to get started with Photoshop actions. Atomiccupcake.com Click here to go to atomiccupcake.com’s actions Atomic Cupcake is a GREAT site for actions. They have an inter- esting pricing setup. For $16.95 per month, you can download an unlimited number of actions. Unlike other action sites, the actions here are made specifically for digital scrapbookers. This is helpful, and it’s one of the reasons we highly recommend this site. Photoshop Support Click here to go to photoshopsupport.com’s actions This site is a directory of Photoshop Actions, with information on how to create and install actions, and links to sites that offer free Photoshop Actions. The Secret Guide to Digital Scrapbooking 57 Action Central Click here to go to atncentral.com’s actions The Photoshop Action Exchange is devoted to the exchange of Photoshop actions among users as a service to the image editing community. There are links to hundreds of different Photoshop actions. The trick is finding the ones for free. After some quick browsing though, it won’t be hard to find at all. Addicted to Design Click here to go to addictedtodesign.com’s actions This site is a wonderful resource for original actions. They have around five free actions to choose from. The real treat, although you will have to pay for them, are the actions they have for sale. You can purchase all twelve of their actions for only $99.00.
