Digital Memories
by Clark
L. and Kathryn H. Kidd
How
to create a digital scrapbook.
This column
was written on a momentous day. Not only were we celebrating our
25th wedding anniversary, but we were also enjoying our
second day of a week-long Thanksgiving trip. We are spending the
next few nights in New Bern, North Carolina—a quaint little village
with a lot of charm and a very relaxed feel. It will be the perfect
place to relax and catch up on all of those neglected chores, like
the writing of this column.
During our
quarter-century of married life, we have been blessed to do quite
a bit of traveling. One of our goals was to spend at least one night
in every state. We are not there yet, but are about 90% complete.
We have also had the opportunity to visit several countries outside
of the United States.
One thing that
has made our travel more memorable is that we have been pretty good
about keeping souvenirs and organizing them into scrapbooks. This
has turned into something of a semi-annual ritual for us. We gather
the souvenirs in large plastic bags and store them away until April
and October conference. Because we are fortunate enough to be able
to watch General Conference on satellite television, we can sit
around in our pajamas and put together our travel scrapbooks as
we're listening to the speakers. Having some mental project to keep
your hands busy actually helps to keep you more alert and attentive
to the speakers—something that women who do knitting or sewing
have undoubtedly known for years.
On occasion
we will look through the scrapbooks and allow them to bring back
all the fond memories of the places we have visited. The kinds of
things we keep and place in the scrapbook include photographs, postcards,
airline ticket stubs, hotel and restaurant bills, and matchbook
covers. These items provide a visual log of when we traveled, what
we saw, and where we ate and slept. They can refresh the memory
when we start to talk about a distant trip, and can't remember all
the details about what we did. They are also helpful if we want
to revisit a destination, to make sure we go back to some of our
favorite spots from an earlier trip.
The creation
of scrapbooks, journals and similar records has always been a hallmark
of the LDS people. There are some that speculate that much of the
health of the scrapbook industry today comes from LDS enthusiasts,
or the neighbors of LDS members who have inherited their love for
the hobby.
Scrapbooks
Have Entered the Digital Age
But what does all this have to do with home computers? Isn't that
supposed to be the topic of this column? Well, in case you haven't
noticed, scrapbooks have entered the digital age. All the work that
you used to do with paper, scissors, glue and photo mounts can now
be done faster and easier with your trusty home computer. The results
may also look more professional than your previous efforts, and
can probably be done in less time.
The first step
is to get your photographs in some kind of digital format, so that
they can be manipulated and stored on your computer. For existing
photographs, a scanner is the solution. A flatbed scanner is usually
the best, although a hand-held wand scanner will work if you are
on a budget. If you only have a limited number of photographs to
digitize, there are photo services that will scan either your prints
or your negatives and return you the digital files.
For new photographs,
most of the larger processing labs give you the option of producing
prints and/or digital copies of your pictures. For the digital option,
you can get your files on floppy diskettes, CDs, or via the Internet.
But for those
who are serious about digital photography, the answer has to be
a digital camera. These have all the features of regular cameras,
but record their images on memory cards, diskettes, or even CDs.
The cameras that use memory cards will also provide connecting cables
and software so that you can upload the pictures onto your computer's
hard drive. You can also purchase additional memory cards for those
long trips where you will take a lot of pictures before getting
back to your computer.
We purchased
our first digital camera about three years ago. We didn't know how
much we would use it, because it was a basic camera and had none
of the features of the professional photo equipment we had used
previously. But since then, our expensive cameras and lenses have
collected dust while our cheap little digital camera has been our
constant companion on all our travels.
Some Advantages
of Digital
Once you have experienced digital photography, there are just
too many advantages that you don't want to lose by going back to
the old way of taking pictures. You can instantly preview your pictures,
so that you can erase the ones that didn't work and then shoot them
again using different options. Once you get home, you can instantly
transfer your work to your computer where it can be edited and then
printed or uploaded to the Internet so that family and friends all
over the world can see your images within minutes of their being
captured by your camera. You don't need to waste the time and money
waiting for a lab to process your pictures, all the time hoping
that they won't destroy or lose your precious film.
We have all
seen those television programs where a computer expert will manipulate
a photograph so that you can read a license plate on a car a mile
away, or recognize an individual face in a crowded stadium. Although
these extreme examples are laughable, most of the techniques they
use are available today using common editing tools for digital images.
You can crop or rotate images, sharpen them, increase or decrease
the brightness level and change the color balance. You can remove
or alter distracting backgrounds, or create entirely new photos
by piecing together portions of other photos. We have all seen those
innovative movies and commercials where the images of long-dead
celebrities have been juxtaposed into more contemporary settings.
Such techniques are really not that far fetched for anyone with
a home computer and some editing software. The old saying, "a photograph
doesn't lie" is unfortunately no longer true.
Many of your
digital photographs will probably never be printed. You will upload
them to web sites, or view them only on your computer screen. Much
like the families of thirty years ago used to gather around the
slide projector and the portable screen, today's families may gather
around the home computer and enjoy some fresh popcorn while viewing
a "slide show" of digital images. Or they may use treasured vacation
snapshots as screen savers that will serve as constant reminders
of happy times.
But you will
want to print some of your images, and you need to know your options.
Once again, if you don't print that many pictures, the larger photo
processing labs will accept your digital files and turn them into
prints that can be mailed back to you. Some makers of digital cameras
also make digital photo printers designed to work with their cameras.
These will usually connect either to your computer or to the camera
directly. You can also achieve excellent results using your own
color printer if you print on photo quality paper and use the printer
settings designed for that paper. It may take you 15 minutes to
print a photo, but the result should rival anything you will get
back from a processing lab. We have been amazed at the high quality
results you can get from a moderately priced (under $300) color
ink jet printer using these techniques.
Now that you
have a better understanding of the tools and techniques, let's get
back to the issue of scrapbooks. Using digital techniques, your
scrapbooks will have the same basic look, although they should look
more professional. The difference will be that you will compose
each page on the computer, rather than piecing it together with
scissors, glue, and photo mounts. Publishing software will allow
you to build pages that contain text, borders, graphics, and digital
images. You can use different type fonts and alter their sizes,
alignment and color. You have complete latitude in terms of how
you compose each page, and what you include on it. Once you are
satisfied with the pages, it is simply a matter of printing them
out and putting them into the scrapbook.
We are still
not to the point where our scrapbooks are 100% digital. We could
scan in the postcards, but it just seems better to have the originals
mounted on the pages. We think we would also lose some of the charm
if we digitized such things as ticket stubs. But allowing the computer
to do the majority of the composing work has certainly improved
the look of our recent scrapbooks. The creative joy of composing
each page is as great whether you are using a glue stick or a mouse.
We use a publishing
program called Print Artist that has been around for a long time.
There are probably others that are as good or better, but Print
Artist is ridiculously inexpensive, easy to use, and it works for
us. You can use it (or any publishing program) to create signs,
banners, business cards, certificates, brochures, greeting cards,
invitations, stationary, labels, and many other items. Most of these
programs come complete with hundreds of templates that you can modify
just slightly to meet your own needs. When we recently bought a
package of Kodak photo quality paper, the package also included
some free software that can be used for managing a digital photo
library and assembling and printing the images in a number of different
formats. Although not as powerful as Print Artist, we were impressed
by the capabilities of this free program.
We started this
column talking about our anniversary. As part of our celebration,
we had a little dinner party and invited a group of friends. We
created the invitations ourselves, including a recent photograph
and one taken shortly before we were married. We received many compliments
concerning the invitation, but we didn't tell anyone how easy those
invitations had been to make. Digital technology and publishing
software can turn anyone into a creative genius, and can usually
do it before lunch.
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