What Are Digital Scrapbooking Elements?

Digital scrapbooking elements are the electronic versions of physical scrapbooking elements. Instead of making a trip to your local scrapbook or craft store to purchase papers, adhesives, glitter, stickers and other physical pieces, you browse the online shops of digital scrapbook elements sites and download files onto your computer. Using software that allows image importing, you commit your memories to a digital page. One of the biggest positives of digital scrapbooking elements is that you’ll never run out of an element. As long as you maintain an unaltered backup copy of each element it’s a simple matter to open a new copy every time you need one. No more running out in the middle of a project and hoping the craft store still has that color/size/style of element in stock.

There are many other things you can do with these digital goodies, such as create photo books, slide shows and Quick Time movies. Your children can even use the digital elements to enhance book reports, video assignments and Science and History Fairs. There is no end to the different uses for digital scrapbook elements.

A variety of software programs are available and able to accept digital scrapbooking elements. They range from MS Word and PowerPoint to Adobe Photoshop and Photoshop Elements. There are also digital scrapbooking software packages designed specifically for scrapping.

Sample listing of compatible software:

• ACDSee Photo Editor
• Corel Paint Shop Pro
• Art Explosion Scrapbook Factory Deluxe
• Photo Impact
• Polaroid My Memories Suite
• Microsoft Publisher

What to Look for in Digital Scrapbooking Elements Sites
If you’re new to the digital scrapbooking world, and particularly to using digital elements, you need to know what to be on the lookout for as you browse the different sites. As we reviewed the various sites included in our list, we compared and considered each one based on the following criteria:

Features
This includes the site, store and tutorial features, as well as the community element the site fostered. Site features that we felt are important were that each one offered articles, news, free downloads, tutorials and access to an archive of past newsletters, freebies and other content. Tutorials and freebies played a big part in the ranking. Since this is fairly new trend there are most certainly novice digi-scrappers who will want (and need) some guidance. The more helpful information the site provided, typically the higher it ranked. Indeed, our “TopTenREVIEWS Gold Award" winner, Scrap Girls has an extensive University section on their site that has information and tips for scrappers of every level of experience. The freebies are important because like any new hobby, getting started can be expensive. Those sites that offered the best quality and variety of free downloads also ranked highly.

Ease of Use
Ease of use on the site is fairly self-explanatory. If the site is hard to use or confusing to navigate, you won’t want to waste the time on it, no matter what great products it might offer. Also considered in the review process was the ease of downloading and purchasing. Most of the sites required you to set up some kind of a user’s account before you could download anything but some went so far as to limit all access to galleries, blogs and forums to “members only”. It’s understandable that only members should be able to post on any of those areas but we felt this made it difficult for new users to get a feel for a the site’s benefits before signing on for more mail in their inboxes. Being able to only read or view those areas would be a much better compromise.

Selection
This consideration encompassed the range of design styles available as well as the types of projects and tools offered. The best sites offered a varied selection; everything from pre-designed quick pages and albums to fonts, embellishments and backgrounds to the more unusual items like blog graphics and calendars.

Quality
Project/element quality is a crucial facet of any digital piece. If the elements aren’t provided in the proper resolution, you will be severely limited in how you can use them. Industry-standard resolution is 300 dpi and the formats used should be jpeg (jpg) and png. These two formats ensure transparency is preserved between layers of elements. In plain terms that means if you put a digital image of a paper clip on top of a background, you’ll still be able to see the background through the open portions of the paper clip.

Help/Support
Help and support are always an important feature and particularly so when you’re dealing with electronic downloads. All of the sites reviewed had an support email address but the best ones had well-developed FAQs pages (Frequently Asked Questions), a site map and perhaps a phone number to call if all else fails.

Additional thoughts
In addition to the items previously mentioned, we also looked at these components of each site to see which ones offered the best user experience. While these weren’t a major weighted factor, they were important to the overall review.

Community
The higher-ranked sites provide numerous ways for the users, designers and site owners to interact. Everything from blogs, chats and message boards to user galleries, forums and emailed newsletters help create a neighborhood that provides inspiration, guidance and help for users and gives designers and site owners valuable feedback on their products while building customer loyalty in their users.

Designers
The number of designers in a site’s design stable has impact on the number of styles and designs that are offered on the site. More designers generally mean greater variety.

Freebies
Most of the sites offer free downloads that range from individual elements to entire kits. These are critical because they allow the user to get a taste of what kinds (both types and designs) of products the site has to offer without investing too much. It’s a “try-before-you-buy” idea that’s particularly important given the economic climate in the world today.

Tutorials
Learning how to use the software tools, design a layout or organize your files is essential to your success in the digital world. The sites with extensive tutorials (some of which were found in the forums or blogs) ranked the best.

Give digital scrapbooking elements a try-you’ll be surprised at how creative you are. At TopTenREVIEWS We Do the Research So You Don't Have To.™