Commemorate the important events in your life with this exciting creativity tool that allows you to showcase your favorite photos in a creative way. With Hallmark Scrapbook Studio Deluxe, you can display your cherished photos in gorgeous frames on colorful pages with expressive text that perfectly captures the moments you want to preserve and celebrate.
All you need for creating ready-to-print digital scrapbook pages is here. Starting with a pre-designed Hallmark template (or one you’ve created on your own), you can add photos to the layout, insert and personalize text, and voila – a personalized scrapbook page. The program’s graphics can be used "as is" or manipulated to fit your needs. It’s relatively easy to either adjust and personalize the given text, replace it with your original expressions, or browse through and select professionally written captions to add to your projects. A full-featured photo-editing program, SnapShot Express, is included and allows you to "fix" photos quickly and easily before showcasing them in your projects.
This program supports traditional scrapbooking techniques as well as work with digital photos. Users can design their photo-ready scrapbook pages "just so", print them out, and cut out the paper where their photos will go.
If you are at a loss for ideas, a good way to jumpstart your imagination is to browse through the program’s pre-designed templates and layouts. These templates might inspire you to collect and organize your photos according to particular themes, such as winter, sports, or garden. Or, you might choose to display photos from special events in your life – birthdays, holidays, religious events, weddings, baby showers, anniversaries, pregnancy (including journal notes), and even vacations -- and arrange them into scrapbook pages. Perhaps you want to showcase photos from your camping trip, or your day at the beach or zoo. There are plenty of templates devoted to children, including special baby pages, bedtime moments, school days, field trips, school performances, and even some pages to commemorate a lost tooth! There are even templates to help you create scrapbook pages dedicated to your special pet.
If the task of creating your own catchy captions seems daunting, simply insert professionally written Hallmark phrases (including titles, verses, and quotes) into your creations! Text can be manipulated and, in addition to 300+ AGFA fonts, this title contains more than 20 exclusive Hallmark fonts to choose from.
Large collections of customizable paper doll graphics are included, complete with accessories and a wide assortment of facial features and clothing. You can create a paper doll that closely matches the photo subject’s appearance and the theme of your scrapbook page – for example, you can make a (near) spitting image of your child in paper doll format, dressed up as a cowboy, then plunk it into a Western-style scrapbook page.
The developers of this software have attempted to produce a software title that is easy to use, with simple drag-and-drop operations. Be aware, however, that if you haven’t worked with similar programs before, you’ll have to invest some time to become familiar with the tools available here. Not everything is entirely intuitive – even something as basic as changing the text font is not immediately apparent. Experimenting with the available tools and perusing of the program’s fair-sized manual will be essential to get a "feel" for the program.
Most projects will involve overlaying graphic objects, and users will need to become accustomed to using the "bring to front" and "send to back" operations, as well as the "bring forward" and "send backward" functions for more fine-tuning. The artistically inclined will enjoy trying to strike a visual balance in their projects.
Of course, the program allows you to import your own pictures and graphics from different sources, including a scanner or digital camera. All graphics can be catalogued, and in fact, the Collections Manager allows users to display only the graphics collections they want to view.
The templates included here are, for the most part, tastefully done. The majority of them are event-oriented, with few pre-designed layouts for everyday scrapbooking. And, though the program boasts hundreds of templates, it was hard not to be disappointed with the quantity of the selection available. Somehow, the numbers on the software box made me expect a lot more. However, the program is brimming with graphics objects and its importing capabilities technically means there are endless possibilities to create original projects.
There seems to be a missed opportunity to add other similar projects, such as photo greeting cards or photo-cube templates, to the program’s offerings. Despite these complaints, however, this program far from misses the mark. The interface is clean, the pre-designed templates are professional and probably adequate in number, and, once the tools are understood, users will consider the program a powerful creativity tool.
