Preserve your treasured memories
While many of us use digital cameras to take family photos, your images are not meant to be stored there permanently.
The next step is to create a photographic or digital album so that you can ensure the longevity of your family’s photographic history - something that can be handed down through generations. I'm sure that at one stage or another, most of us are guilty of putting our family photographs in either a shoebox or a photo album. But did you realise that you may be shortening the life of those photos by storing them that way? Yes, a photo album is the right way to protect and store your photos, but most store-bought photo albums damage rather than protect those treasured images.
Keep handling to a minimum
If photographs must be handled, it's best to hold them by their edges and only with clean, dry hands. The oils on your hands actually speed up the deterioration process, as does too much exposure to sunlight.
Store properly
Once you’ve made a copy, visit a scrapbook store for acid-free and lignin-free boxes and folders and for protective sleeves and labelling tools that will help you organise photos and will help protect prints properly.
Designed to preserve photographs in their original state, scrapbooking albums are of a higher quality than those of many typical photo albums available, as anyone interested in scrapbooking will tell you that materials must be acid-free, lignin-free, and use pigment-based inks, which are fade resistant, colourfast, and often waterproof. Many scrapbookers also use buffered paper to protect photos from acid in memorabilia used in the scrapbook.
Upload the copies
Digital cameras are a wonderful invention and they're great for taking and storing photos, but your photos shouldn't stay on the memory card or on the computer forever. Let those photos from those sunny summer days continue to spread the summer fun wherever they are seen.
It's easy to make copies of old and new photographs with a flat-bed scanner, and with the right software (such as Photoshop) you can easily enhance faded or scratched photos.
Print out digital copies of your favourite photos to create a photo book or a family album and show off all of those great snapshots - or pop them into a digital photo frame. Add captions, stories, and family history information, or create a unique theme around your treasured photos. Most photo-storage sites let you publish photo books from the images you’ve uploaded to them.
Scrapbooking
Modern scrapbooking involves the preservation of photographs and the stories behind them. By creating scrapbook albums you can ensure that those stories and the details of the subject in the photographs are passed on to future generations. No longer will beautiful photos languish in a box or an old album at the back of a cupboard, people will want to look at your scrapbooks again and again!
Scrapbooking is a fun way of preserving photographs in the form of a scrapbook, which is decorated and embellished to suit your own personal preference.
The most important scrapbooking supply is the album itself, which can be permanently bound, or allow for insertion of pages.
Basic materials include backgrounds, decorative corner mounts and frames, and various types of embellishments.
Your scrapbooking album can be as simple or elaborate as required, and there are many specialized tools such as personal cutting machines, rubber stamps, punches, stencils, inking tools, eyelet setters and heat embossing tools.
Embellishments include stickers, rub-ons, stamps, eyelets, brads, chipboard elements in various shapes, alphabet letters, lace, wire, fabric, beads, sequins, and ribbon.
The use of die cut machines is also increasingly popular; in recent years a number of electronic die-cutting machines resembling a plotter with a drag knife have hit the market, enabling scrappers to use their computer to create die cuts out of any shape or font with the use of free or third party software.
Digital and Published Scrapbooks
The advent of scanners, desktop publishing, page layout programs, and advanced printing options make it relatively easy to create professional-looking layouts in digital form. The Internet allows scrapbookers to self-publish their work. Scrapbooks that exist completely in digital image form are referred to as digital scrapbooks.
While some people prefer the physicality of the actual artifacts they paste onto the pages of books, the digital scrapbooking hobby has grown in popularity in recent years. Two of the most popular photo uploading sites are Picasa and Flikr, both of which are digital image storing and sharing websites.
Some of the advantages include a greater diversity of materials, less environ-mental impact, cost savings, the ability to share finished pages more readily on the Internet, and the use of image editing software to experiment with manipulating page elements in multiple ways without making permanent adjustments.
A traditional scrapbook layout may employ a background paper with a torn edge. While a physical page can only be torn once and never restored, a digital paper can be torn and untorn with ease, allowing the scrapbooker to try out different looks without wasting supplies.
Some web-based digital scrapbooks include a variety of wallpapers and backgrounds to help the users create a rich visual experience. Each paper, photo, or embellishment exists on its own layer in your document, and you can reposition them at your discretion.
Furthermore, digital scrapbooking is not limited to digital storage and display.
Many digital scrappers print their finished layouts to be stored in scrapbook albums. Others have books professionally printed in hard bound books to be saved as keepsakes.
Because of the integrated design and order workflow, real hardcover bound books can be produced more cost effectively.
Digital scrapbooking has advanced to the point where digital scrapbook layouts may be made entirely online using Web-based software. Users upload their photos, create a digital scrapbook layout using a Web page and digital scrapbook graphics. The layout can then be downloaded as a low-resolution JPEG file for sharing on the Web or as a high-resolution JPEG file for printing.
